Device42 is a company that provides comprehensive, continuously up-to-date views of assets across an organization’s entire IT infrastructure. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Device42 CEO and founder Raj Jalan to learn more about the company.
Raj Jalan’s Background
What is Raj Jalan’s background? Jalan said:
“In the IT Infrastructure industry for 25+ years, starting with a consulting practice earlier in my career helping enterprises migrate to newer technology stacks.”
Formation Of Device42
How did the idea for the company come together? Jalan shared:
“One of the primary challenges in my consulting practice was the lack of visibility into IT systems for every client and project. For instance, when upgrading hardware or an operating system on a server, clients would typically inform me that only two applications would be affected. However, come Monday, we’d often discover that three other applications were unexpectedly down. Another emerging trend at the time was the widespread adoption of virtualization, which necessitated broader visibility into the intersections of various IT silos. Unable to find a suitable solution to these issues, I was driven to create Device42.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Jalan’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Jalan reflected:
“My favorite memories revolve around working with the exceptional team we were able to assemble. It was incredibly rewarding to watch the team tackle complex and challenging problems while growing both personally and professionally.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Jalan explained:
“The problem we solve is straightforward: providing greater visibility into complex, hybrid IT environments and enabling organizations to fully understand their assets. We offer an advanced discovery process that goes well beyond simply populating a database with discovered information. First, Device42 discovers everything—using a range of protocols, we identify servers, hypervisors, routers, switches, storage, and more, from legacy technologies to the latest cloud workloads. Next, we normalize and categorize the data, enriching it when needed with external data sources, and map out the interdependencies across different technologies. This enables our customers to resolve issues more quickly, run IT operations more efficiently, and accelerate migration and modernization with confidence. It also ensures they can meet regulatory and internal compliance requirements, all because they have a comprehensive understanding of their assets and how they are interrelated. Additionally, our latest AI capability, InsightsAI, allows users to ask questions in plain English and receive immediate, actionable answers and reports.”
Challenges Faced
When asking Jalan about the challenges faced in his sector of work, he acknowledged:
“The IT infrastructure market has undergone significant changes over the past 10 to 15 years, and as a result, our product-market fit (PMF) has had to evolve continuously to keep pace with shifting user needs and to drive ongoing innovation.”
Evolution Of Device42’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Jalan noted:
“Similar to the previous point, this is an ongoing process. For example, we are now evolving to leverage large language models (LLMs) to enhance productivity and provide our customers with more timely and accessible information.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Jalan cited:
“From the beginning, we bootstrapped the company and built a platform designed to be easy to deploy and manage, with a clear focus on delivering a much faster time to value than our competitors. This approach helped us attract customers across 70+ countries. A key part of this success was establishing a strong partner network to bring our product to market, a strategy that proved invaluable in the long run, as most of our revenue came through partners, without the high costs associated with building a large salesforce.”
“The next major milestone came when we secured backing from our private equity firm and investors, which enabled us to accelerate product innovation, expand our executive team, and enhance our direct sales efforts, complementing the contributions of our partners. Our most recent milestone, which we are all incredibly proud of, was the acquisition of Device42 by Freshworks for $230 million. Today, Device42 operates as a business unit of Freshworks, continuing to execute its go-to-market strategy with the added support and investment of a much larger organization.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Jalan about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We have customers across nearly all verticals and in over 70 countries, with many success stories to share. One that particularly stands out is a recent example where a customer was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to Microsoft for technology licenses. After implementing Device42, the customer was able to immediately determine how many licenses they had, how many were being used, and how many they actually needed. As a result, they saved over $200,000 in software licensing costs, ensured compliance with Microsoft’s licensing terms, and recouped the cost of their Device42 subscription multiple times over in savings. This is a great example of the ROI our solution delivers. We frequently see similar situations, as many organizations rely on spreadsheets or a patchwork of disconnected tools that fail to accurately reflect their actual environment. Device42 provides a ‘single source of truth’ that many of these organizations were lacking.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Jalan assessed:
“Our solution addresses several key sub-markets within IT. One is IT Asset Management (ITAM), which focuses on managing the IT portfolio for investment and financial tracking. The second is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which tracks all IT resources at the Configuration Item (CI) level. We also cover the Application Dependency Management (ADM) market.”
“The ITAM market is currently valued at around $8 billion and is expected to grow at 8% annually, reaching $13 billion in the next five years. The CMDB market, valued at $2.5 billion, is growing at a rate of 13%, and is projected to reach $6.2 billion over the same period. The ADM market is experiencing a 14% annual growth, increasing from $2.5 billion to $5 billion. Altogether, these markets total approximately $13 billion today and are expected to expand to $23 billion in the next five years.”
“Additionally, as part of Freshworks, we are also contributing to the IT Service Management (ITSM) market, which is currently valued at $10 billion and is projected to grow to $30 billion in the next five years.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Jalan affirmed:
“Our solution offers a number of differentiating capabilities that set us apart in the market. First, we lead in the depth and breadth of our discovery process, uncovering more information than any other product available. Customers consistently tell us that they trust our data more than any competing solution. We also provide an on-premises deployment option, ensuring that customers retain full ownership of their data and that nothing leaves their premises. This level of security is why many of the largest financial institutions and government organizations rely on our technology. Additionally, we offer built-in, product-specific functionality such as Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IP Address Management (IPAM), which are crucial to the discovery process. With Device42, customers don’t have to navigate between multiple products—everything they need for comprehensive visibility is available in one solution. Another key benefit is our exceptional time to value: customers can deploy Device42 during lunch and start seeing results by the end of the day. Finally, we offer over 30 integrations with other tools that customers may already be using, enabling them to leverage existing systems while benefiting from the richer, more accurate data that Device42 provides.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Jalan concluded:
“Since joining Freshworks, our focus has shifted toward enhancing the efficiency of IT Operations Management. Our goal is to drive automation within IT, with a particular emphasis on implementing AIOps in the most effective and strategic way.”
