Anaplan was founded in 2006 by Michael Gould and Guy Haddleton in York, England. Gould, a mathematician and enterprise software veteran, designed Anaplan’s proprietary Hyperblock calculation engine to handle massive planning models that spreadsheets and legacy planning tools couldn’t manage at scale.
The platform lets organizations build connected planning models across finance, sales, supply chain, marketing, HR, and operations. Instead of isolated spreadsheets in each department, Anaplan provides a single environment where changes in one area automatically cascade through related plans. When sales forecasts change, the supply chain, hiring, and financial plans update accordingly.
Anaplan’s architecture is genuinely different from traditional planning tools. The Hyperblock engine is an in-memory, multi-dimensional calculation engine that can process billions of cells in real time. Users build models using dimensions, line items, and formulas — closer to a powerful multidimensional database than a spreadsheet.
Thoma Bravo acquired Anaplan for $10.7 billion in 2022, taking the company private after it had been publicly traded since 2018. Before the acquisition, Anaplan had annual revenue of approximately $640 million and was growing at over 30% year-over-year.
The company serves more than 2,000 enterprise customers, including Coca-Cola, Del Monte, HP, and VMware. Anaplan is particularly strong in complex planning scenarios involving multiple business units, geographies, and time horizons.
Frank Calderoni served as CEO during the IPO years and through the Thoma Bravo acquisition. The company employs more than 2,500 people and competes with Workday Adaptive Planning, Oracle EPM Cloud, and OneStream in the enterprise planning market.
