The MD of a newly rebranded MSP gunning for £100m revenue says a near-death experience has made him more “carefree”.
commited is the new name for Hudson Hill, a Runcorn-based MSP that has grown rapidly through 15 acquisitions and absorptions.
Already claiming to be the North-West’s largest SME-focused MSP, it is on course to turn over £25m this year.
But the privately held outfit now intends to acquire another “20-plus” peers after setting itself a £100m revenue goal, owner and MD Ian Hudson told IT Channel Oxygen.
“The plan is to get it to the biggest northern powerhouse we can… and then, who wants it? Does a PE want to take it national, or does one of the consolidators want to consume us?”
“Hudson Hill sounded a bit s**t”
Hudson founded Hudson Hill in 2004 with Geoff Hill, who left the business in 2012.
Today, it draws 70% of its top line from recurring revenue, counting TD Synnex, Ingram, Acronis and Microsoft among its key suppliers and vendors.
Asked about the rationale for the rebrand, Hudson said the previous name “sounded a bit s**t”.
“I tried to rebrand it a couple of times, because I knew I didn’t want it to sound like a nasty solicitor’s firm from Warrington,” he said.
“The first rebrand, we tried to call it ‘Zag’. We paid a fortune to have a branding agency for this… but it was trademarked.
“I lost the wind from my sails after that first one and thought, ‘well, let’s just keep it as Hudson Hill’ – the press and a chunk of vendors didn’t know us at the time, and we were quite happy with that as it allowed us to operate under the radar.
“But we’re getting to the size now where there will be an exit at some point in the future, and we needed to sort that brand piece out.”
Hudson says it was he himself who came up with ‘commited’, which is a spin on its three key stomping grounds of ‘comms’, ‘IT’ and the ‘education’ sector.
“I was told three times I was going to die”
Hudson kicked off commited’s M&A run at the start of the decade, after nearly dying from Covid before the pandemic was even declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation.
“I was told three times I was going to die, or to make my preparations and say goodbye – because I probably wouldn’t make it to the day after,” he recalled.
“I’m a little bit more carefree now, having come close to death, so we put our foot down on the acquisition trail.
“I’m full of energy, and am in a very fragmented market that above me is kind of falling apart because they can’t service the debt and below me they don’t really know what they’re doing.”
Because it isn’t private-equity backed (its M&A to date has been self funded or funded by ThinCats – now Shawbrook Group), commited can afford to press pause on M&A while it shores up its systems, Hudson said.
“Our future plan is to get to £100m, for no other reason than you’ve got to point the ship in some direction,” he said.
“We know who we’re targeting, and we’ll do another 20-plus acquisitions. If we buy a duff one, it might slow us down for a year or two, but we’ve got the sausage machine now to run quite fast with them.”
Hudson said his biggest M&A mistakes related to due diligence.
“We outsourced it a little bit, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good. We do all our due diligence now,” he said.
Hudson was quick to tip his hat to commited’s engineers, saying the aim is to ensure all staff share in the profits upon a potential exit.
“Most of the customers are there because of the senior engineers, who aren’t commercially minded,” he said.
“I don’t know what it will be yet. Let’s see what Mr Burnham does, but if it was today it would be an EMI scheme.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
