Trustmarque Ultima has “kind of cheated” by choosing ‘TMU’ as its new identity, CEO Simon Williams said as he opened up on the enlarged outfit’s full rebrand.
As exclusively revealed by IT Channel Oxygen, Trustmarque and Ultima joined forces last October to create a VAR-MSP powerhouse on a “trajectory” towards £1bn in sales.
Six months after renaming itself ‘Trustmarque-Ultima’, the enlarged firm today unveiled a full rebrand to 650 customers at its Fusion Live event.
The York-based Microsoft, Cisco and IBM partner, which ranked 6th in Oxygen 250 2026, will now colloquially be known as ‘TMU’, Williams confirmed.
“We’ve kind of cheated and done best of both worlds,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“We’ve kept both names to respect the heritage that both companies have, but we clearly want a single identity for the market.
“There are a lot of three-letter acronyms in our industry. We really like ‘TMU’, and actually, we really like the ‘Technology Made Unstoppable’ from TMU.”
“Proudly a VAR and MSP”
With offices in Reading, London, York and Hamilton, the enlarged TMU business boasts around 1,000 staff and 3,000 customers across cloud, security, AI, networking and managed services.
Its business is split down the middle between VAR and MSP, and between public sector and corporate, Williams said.
“We are very proudly both a VAR and an MSP,” he said.
While market giants Computacenter and Softcat posted jaw-dropping 59% and 33% annual growth in their latest half-year numbers (see here and here), the outlook for the wider channel remains more constrained.
Where does One Equity Partners– and Apse Capital-backed TMU fit into the landscape?
“We’re certainly seeing growth in bringing the two businesses together,” Williams responded.
“There’s been really positive cross-selling across the different parts of the business.
“I think some of those figures, particularly the Computacenter ones, are very North America, and very hyperscaler. And if they’re not hyperscaler, they’re very large enterprise. There aren’t many people in the channel who play in that market – Computacenter are just excellent at it.
“It’s not a market we play in: we don’t do large datacentre in North America for hyperscalers.”
TMU is seeing “really strong growth” in its AI services, Williams said, however, not only when it comes to Microsoft’s Frontier Firm vision, but also on the underlying infrastructure.
Its Cisco business grew 93% in the networking vendor’s year to 25 July 2026, he emphasised.
“I think it’s absolutely beautiful”
TMU’s post-merger exec team is a mix of the two legacy brands, with separate MDs existing for its Livingstone, Just After Midnight and Acutest sub-brands, Williams said.
“The first stage was to get the people right; the second is to get the technology right,” he said, stressing that TMU is in the process of consolidating 19 different HR systems onto one platform.
TMU’s logo also now includes a spinning top symbol, to signify the ‘Advantage Point’ the firm believes it offers.
“I’m very pleased with the outcome,” Williams said of the rebranding.
“I think it’s absolutely beautiful, and the team has done a cracking job on it. It’s amazing how much you can achieve in such a short space of time.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
Comments 1