Overview
Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio, and St. Petersburg, Russia
Insight Investment: $10 million in October 2002
Current Status: Acquired in March 2004

Business Description
Aelita Software provides systems management solutions to organizations that rely on Microsoft Windows technologies. Aelita enables system administrators working in Active Directory and Exchange environments to administer, migrate, recover and audit these critical systems.

Challenge:
Aelita co-founders Ratmir Timashev (CEO) and Andrey Baranov (CTO) sought an investor with deep experience in software to help fund continued growth in Aelita's leading product suite and to guide the expansion of Aelita's the company's direct sales and telesales initiatives. At the same time, Aelita's founders wished to achieve partial liquidity while retaining control and majority ownership of the business.

Solution:
Insight invested $10 million in Aelita in October 2002 and began a process of intensive collaboration with Aelita's founding team to strengthen the company's senior management team and expand distribution of Aelita's software.

Insight introduced Aelita to several candidates and assisted in the recruitment of Aelita's Vice President of Sales, Richard Scuse (formerly a vice president of IBM's Tivoli Software group) and Vice President of Marketing Aggie Haslup. At the same time, Aelita used Insight's investment to dramatically expand its telesales operation and to grow indirect distribution through third parties, including EDS and Hewlett-Packard. Insight made introductions to enterprise customers, resulting in major sales to Bank One, Citigroup, and General Electric.

During the period of Insight's investment Aelita grew annual revenue by more than 100%. In 2003, Aelita was ranked #97 on the Inc. 500 list of the nation's fastest growing private companies.

Aelita Software was acquired by Quest Software (NASDAQ: QSFT) for $115 million in cash in March 2004, enabling Quest to broaden its solution set to encompass tools for administrators in Windows environments. Ratmir Timashev joined Quest as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Windows Management Solutions.