Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Endurance is a very large organization, serving more than 600,000 accounts around the world, according to the press release from Accel-KKR, and operating more than 24 "branded properties," meaning that Endurance itself is the parent company of Many

Since being acquired by Audax in 2003, Endurance itself had made 17 acquisitions, including the notable purchase of PowWeb in 2006, and of IPOWER in 2007. 

As is often the case with the acquisitions of large hosting customer bases, particularly in the shared hosting market, the migration of customers to Endurance was bumpy in both cases, and created a list of downtime and service issues, according to much discussion online at the time.

Unlike those acquisitions, of course, the purchase of the whole company by Audax group is unlikely to have any direct impact on the operations of Endurance or any of its hosting properties.

"[Endurance CEO] Steve Sydness and his team did an outstanding job working together with Audax to source and integrate 17 add-on acquisitions during our ownership period," said Audax co-CEO Geoffrey S. Rehnert, in a press release, "building Endurance into a leader in the shared web hosting market. We wish Steve and his team continued success."

According to the Accel-KKR press release, Sydness, along with executive vice presidents Hari Ravichandran and Thomans Gorny and their senior management team will continue to hold a significant equity stake in the company, while Accel-KKR takes on a majority share.

"While we are proud of the leading brands and worldwide customer base we have developed," said Sydness, quoted in the Accel-KKR announcement, "we are confident that the best is yet to come for our company -- and for our customers. Our industry remains a highly fragmented one, in which we are well-positioned to continue our growth, both organically and through acquisitions. We look forward to working with Accel-KKR to achieve this end."