Technology Reseller v37

01732 759725 14 NEWS : RESELLERS Martin Flick Peter Sweetbaum Hampshire-based Onecom has completed its third and fourth acquisitions since July 2019 when it announced a £100 million deal with mid-market private equity firm LDC in support of a three-year growth strategy. These include the acquisitions of close rival Olive Communications, which over the last five years has built on its mobile heritage to become a market leader in cloud communications with annual revenues of £31 million, and 9 Group, which broadens Onecom’s non-mobile product offering and market reach. The acquisition of Olive alone makes Onecom the largest independent business- to-business mobile, fixed-line and cloud specialist in the UK, with an annual turnover of over £140 million and a customer base of more than 500,000 business end users. Darren Ridge, who founded Onecom in 2002 and has grown the business to annual revenues of more than £90m, remains a significant shareholder and Non-Executive Director, with Olive Chief Executive Martin Flick becoming Onecom Group CEO. Onecom’s acquisition of 9 Group, its second deal in as many months, adds thousands of fixed line and cloud customers and hundreds of channel partners to its customer base and moves its mix of mobile and non-mobile communications solutions to a 50/50 split. Under the deal, 9 Retail, which has over 5,000 telephony, hosted voice and on-premise customers, becomes a Onecom Group company, along with 9 Partners, which provides 450 indirect channel partners with a suite of integrated connectivity solutions, customer service and billing and analytics. 9 Retail and 9 Partners will retain their branding and continue to trade separately as distinct direct and indirect routes to market, while benefiting from Onecom’s market position, resources and strategic relationships with partners including Vodafone, Mitel and Samsung. Former 9 Group company eve Networks and the group’s separate IT business are not part of the deal and will remain under their existing ownership. Martin Flick, Onecom CEO, said: “Supporting and investing in channel partners is essential to our ambition as we go forward. We have a well-established footprint in enterprise and the mid- market, and the acquisition will help us, through valued partners, drive sales of our exceptional products and services to businesses of all sizes.” Onecom expands portfolio and reach with acquisitions of Olive and 9 Group Content+Cloud gains US foothold Microsoft-focused cloud services and digital transformation provider Content+Cloud has extended its managed services capability with the acquisition of Sipcom, a digital transformation specialist focusing on unified communication and collaboration (UCC) tools within the Microsoft ecosystem. As well as bringing expertise in voice communications and collaboration to Content+Cloud’s customers, Sipcom’s global reach gives Content+Cloud a US presence for the first time, enabling it to deliver Microsoft Teams and other UCC services on a worldwide basis. This is Content+Cloud’s fifth acquisition since private equity firm ECI Partners took a majority stake in the firm (then IT Lab) in 2016. It follows those of cyber security specialist Perspective Risk in 2017; SMB specialist Mirus IT in 2019; Microsoft 365 partner Content and Code in 2018; and Azure specialist Sol-Tec in 2020. Peter Sweetbaum, CEO of Content+Cloud, said: “Over the last five years we have brought together some of the most exciting businesses within the Microsoft technology ecosystem, expanding on our market leading cloud-native, Azure and Modern Workplace capabilities. Content+Cloud is one of the most certified Microsoft cloud specialists globally and the acquisition of Sipcom enables us to help our customers unlock even greater value across Microsoft’s three clouds.” The deal increases Content+Cloud’s annualised revenue to £100m and its headcount to more than 775. https://contentandcloud.com/ Channel 3 MBO Channel 3 Consulting’s senior management team of John Howard, Eleanor Rollason and Lucy McLintock are planning to take on more staff, launch additional services and expand geographically after securing investment capital to acquire the company from its founding directors. Channel 3 helps healthcare organisations and the public sector implement digital transformation programmes that harness the power of technology to improve services and deliver better outcomes. First business award for TechCare TechCare, the Staffordshire-based IT support and software development company, has been named Cannock Chase Small Business of the Year at the Sutton Coldfield, Lichfield & Tamworth and Cannock Chase Annual Awards Celebration 2021 organised by the Greater Birmingham Chambers. TechCare MD, Karl Frankham, said: “Winning the award is a real testament to our team and I would like to say a massive ‘thank you’ to all of them. Their hard work has helped us to win this – our very first business award. They always work hard, but over the last 12 months throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, they’ve absolutely smashed it by putting in extra hours, dealing with uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and going above and beyond to meet our clients’ needs.” www.techcare.co.uk SCC launches own CSP SCC Document Services has launched its own Content Services Platform (CSP) to help organisations of all sizes digitalise more of their cross-department data, documents and workflows. Called UVu, the modular CSP application brings together several data and content management functions in a single unified system, giving firms a single unified view of document workflows. It can be accessed anywhere, anytime, on any device, integrates with popular SaaS products such as Microsoft 365, Sharepoint and SAGE and is provided on a consumption-based cloud model. https://www.scc-ds.com/ Karl Frankham