What Symas does

Symas Corporation, founded in 1999 as a Delaware C Corporation and headquartered in Grand Junction, Colorado, is a privately held open-source infrastructure company that commercializes the OpenLDAP directory server and the LMDB (Lightning Memory-Mapped Database) embedded key-value store. The company operates as a fully virtual organization of approximately 19 employees, of whom roughly 13 are technical contributors and several are core OpenLDAP developers, including CTO Howard Chu, the Chief Architect of the OpenLDAP Project. Symas is the primary commercial sponsor of the OpenLDAP Project and is led by a stable founder team — Matthew Hardin (CEO), Marty Heyman (President), and Howard Chu (CTO, Chief Architect) — two of whom have held executive positions continuously since founding. The firm has been profitable since 2007 and carries no debt.

The company's core products are packaged, tested, and supported binaries of OpenLDAP (with the LMDB backend) and a standalone LMDB offering for use as an embedded database. LMDB is engineered as a 32KB object-code, ~6KLOC C implementation that uses memory-mapped files to deliver in-memory read performance with disk persistence, full ACID semantics with MVCC, crash-proof operation without logs or recovery procedures, and reader/writer transaction isolation. Underlying technologies include OpenSSL, Cyrus SASL, Heimdal Kerberos, Libargon2, and Libevent, and binaries are shipped for RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, and SLES across multiple releases and CPU architectures.

Symas generates revenue through annual technical-support subscriptions (including a "Gold High Severity" tier with 24x7x365 hotline), fixed-price LMDB source-level support, and professional services billed via statements of work covering migration, upgrades/improvements, sponsored OpenLDAP enhancements, developer support, and porting services for LMDB adoption. GTM is sales-led, fully virtual, and direct via [email protected], [email protected], and phone; marketing relies on a content-first blog (117+ posts), social channels, and active participation in LDAPCon, ApacheCon, LinuxCon, and related events. Customers are enterprise IT organizations with directory and identity infrastructure requirements, LDAP engineers and systems administrators needing expert support beyond documentation, and application developers integrating LMDB as an embedded data store.

Name

Symas

Legal name

Symas Corporation

Website

https://symas.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1999

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Symas provides commercial OpenLDAP directory software support and the LMDB embedded key-value database, serving enterprise IT, LDAP administrators, and application developers globally with annual subscriptions, 24x7x365 support tiers, and migration/professional services.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Identity and Access Management Software

NAICS

Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Directory Services & Identity Stores (LDAP/AD, Cloud Directory) (HDAEAJAA)

akta.pro secondary industries

Directory Services & Identity Stores (AD/LDAP/Cloud Directories) (HDADAAAE), Directory Services & Identity Data Platforms (BPAMAEAG)

Keywords

• OpenLDAP support services
• LDAP directory management
• Identity access management
• Embedded database software
• Key-value data store

Headquarters

HQ city

Grand Junction

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Technical Support Subscriptions: Support subscriptions provide access to tested and packaged binaries, product maintenance, software upgrades, defect fixes, and unlimited email support tickets processed per chosen service level. Gold 'High Severity' option includes 24x7x365 hotline for production problems.
2. Professional Services: Migration services, upgrades/improvements, sponsored OpenLDAP enhancements, developer support, and porting services for LMDB adoption. Billed via statements of work.
3. LMDB Support: Fixed-price Gold or Enterprise source-level support for LMDB users. Sold alongside OpenLDAP support.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Symas provides commercially packaged and supported OpenLDAP directory server binaries for Linux distributions, the LMDB embedded key-value database, and a suite of professional services including technical support subscriptions, directory migration, upgrade assistance, and sponsored OpenLDAP feature development.

Product overview

Symas offers a portfolio of open source identity and access management products centered on OpenLDAP and LMDB. The core offering is Symas OpenLDAP, a professionally packaged and supported version of the OpenLDAP directory server software for Linux distributions. Supporting this is LMDB (Lightning Memory-Mapped Database), an embedded key-value database developed for the OpenLDAP Project. The company also provides complementary professional services including technical support plans (ranging from email-based to Gold 24x7x365), migration services, upgrade assistance, and sponsored enhancement programs. Symas operates a two-stream release model with Long Term Support (LTS) and Feature Release branches.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Symas OpenLDAP Packaged and supported OpenLDAP server and client software for multiple Linux distributions, providing directory services for identity and access management. Includes OpenSSL, Cyrus SASL, Heimdal Kerberos, Libargon2, and Libevent dependencies and is available in LTS and Feature Release branches.
• LMDB (Lightning Memory-Mapped Database) An ultra-fast, ultra-compact, crash-proof, key-value embedded data store developed for the OpenLDAP Project. Uses memory-mapped files to deliver the read performance of a pure in-memory database while retaining disk-based persistence, with full ACID semantics, MVCC, and a codebase of approximately 32KB.
• Symas Technical Support Annual technical support subscriptions for Symas OpenLDAP and LMDB, including access to tested binaries, software upgrades, defect fixes, and unlimited email support tickets. The Gold High Severity tier adds a 24x7x365 hotline for production-critical issues.
• Migration Services Professional services that migrate existing directory infrastructure to Symas OpenLDAP, delivered directly by Symas technical staff and billed on a statement-of-work basis.
• Upgrades and Improvements Professional services to assist customers with upgrading OpenLDAP installations to newer versions, delivered by Symas staff and billed via statements of work.
• Sponsored OpenLDAP Enhancements Custom development engagements in which customers sponsor specific enhancements or features in OpenLDAP, with work performed by Symas's core OpenLDAP developers.

Quantifiable outcome

• 10,500 mixed search/modify operations per core per second with 10M entries on a 2.2GHz Linux system
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature11 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• COBOLworxminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 April 2025Symas's COBOLworx team developed the new COBOL compiler frontend for GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), merged into GCC 15 released in April/May 2025. This represents Symas's involvement in COBOL modernization tooling.
• OpenLDAP FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSymas is the primary commercial sponsor of the OpenLDAP Project, founded in 1999. Several Symas staff members are core OpenLDAP contributors. Howard Chu (Symas CTO) is the Chief Architect of the OpenLDAP Project.
• EvolveumminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSymas collaborated with Evolveum at ApacheCon 2017 on a session about 'How to Govern and Maintain Compliance Using Open Source Identity Management Components.' Combined midPoint IdM system with OpenLDAP for a complete identity management and governance solution.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Okta: Cloud-native identity and access management leader. Competes with Symas in the broader IAM stack — particularly for organizations consolidating on cloud identity rather than maintaining on-prem LDAP directories.
• Ping Identity: Enterprise IAM platform covering federation, directory, and access management. Overlaps with Symas in directory and authentication use cases for large enterprises, though as part of a broader identity suite.
• Radiant Logic: Federated identity and virtual directory provider for large enterprises. Comparable as a directory infrastructure vendor for organizations consolidating identity across heterogeneous sources, overlapping with Symas's enterprise directory use cases.
• ForgeRock: Enterprise identity platform (now under Thoma Bravo) with directory and LDAP-related capabilities. Competes in the same enterprise identity infrastructure category as Symas OpenLDAP for large-scale deployments.
• Microsoft Active Directory / Entra ID: The dominant commercial directory and identity platform (on-prem AD plus cloud Entra ID). Symas positions OpenLDAP as the vendor-independent alternative to AD, making Microsoft the primary incumbent Symas competes against for enterprise identity workloads.

Emerging players

• JumpCloud: Cloud-native directory-as-a-service targeting SMEs and cloud-forward organizations. Represents the emerging SaaS-style directory alternative to on-prem OpenLDAP deployments that Symas serves.
• ManageEngine: Zoho's IT management division offering Active Directory management and directory tools. Competes for the same LDAP administrator persona Symas targets, particularly for monitoring, migration, and ongoing directory operations.

Direct peers

• Apache Directory (ApacheDS): ApacheDS is an open-source LDAP and X.500 directory server, with Symas staff (James K. Lowden) chairing the Apache Directory PMC. Competes with Symas OpenLDAP in the open-source directory server category.
• Open Identity Platform (OpenDJ): OpenDJ (now stewarded under Open Identity Platform) is the open-source LDAP directory server forked from Sun/Forgerock. Direct comparable to Symas OpenLDAP in targeting enterprises seeking vendor-independent directory infrastructure.
• Red Hat (389 Directory Server): Red Hat maintains 389 Directory Server, the direct open-source LDAP alternative to OpenLDAP referenced in Symas's own benchmarks. Comparable as a packaged, commercially supported directory server competing for the same enterprise on-prem identity infrastructure customers.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/symascorp
• YouTubeyoutube.com/symas
• Facebookfacebook.com/symascorp
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/symas/mycompany

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles5 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Symas