The UK’s top 250 channel partners defied the straitened backdrop by growing collective sales 12.6% to £29.2bn in their latest years.
That’s according to Oxygen 250, which ranks and profiles the UK’s leading resellers and MSPs by revenue and was compiled in association with Nebula Global Services.
You can download the report for free below courtesy of Nebula Global Services.
From £1bn-plus giants like Computacenter and Softcat, to the sub-£50m specialists that tail the report, these 250 firms represent a formidable front line between vendors and the end-user IT budgets they are so eager to unlock.
Giving hardware the heave-ho
Countless firms in the report spent their latest annual periods sacrificing one-off product sales at the altar of higher-margin services and recurring revenues, partly in a reaction to a systemic slowdown in the hardware market.
Their collective growth slowed to 12.6%, compared with 17.8% a year previously.
But booming demand for technologies like cyber and AI are giving cause for optimism to many partner CEOs, including the CEO of market giant Softcat.
“I still think the future of the IT channel – the value that we provide in the value chain as capable solutions architects, implementers, managers, resellers of the products that go into the IT estate – has never been greater,” Graham Charlton told us.
Who are the Oxygen 250?
Analysing the make-up of the top 250, some 189 are UK based, and 61 are either internationally headquartered or have overseas ownership. Of the UK contingent, 103 are privately owned, 68 are private equity backed, and 14 are listed (or belong to listed companies).
They range from enterprise IT powerhouses and all-purpose e-tailers, to niche cyber, software, cloud, unified comms, managed print and AV specialists.
Any vendor wishing to increase UK end-user wallet share must first win the hearts of this influential band of trusted advisors.
We’ve highlighted several key trends throughout the report.
Did you know, for example, that four of the Oxygen 250 top ten are now female led?
Sustainability continues to be a boardroom issue for these 250 firms, meanwhile, with more and more each month launching circular IT schemes, becoming B Corps or setting carbon reduction goals.
Going back ten years, Computacenter stood alone as the market’s sole £1bn-plus player.
Now, the race for number-one is closely fought, with no fewer than six companies turning over more than that amount.
Who made number one?
