Kennet Partners and Joe Wang are investing $17 million to acquire a majority stake in TreeHouse Interactive.

Headquartered in Draper, Utah, TreeHouse develops software-as-a-service (SaaS) products that provide relationship management and marketing automation. TreeHouse's programs are called Reseller View and Marketing View. The company says revenue grew 49 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Kennet Partners is a growth equity firm headquartered in London with about $700 million in capital under management. The firm focuses on investing in technology businesses in Europe and North America.

Joe Wang is an executive best known for leading software business Landesk Software. Landesk made an acquisition in 2013, buying VMware's Protect product group, an information technology services provider.

The deal comes as investors embrace the SaaS model for software, which provides a more consistent revenue stream than previous approaches, such as packaged software. For more, see Plugging Into Software and Thoma Bravo & Others Bet Big on the Cloud.