Advania UK has an “opportunity for hyper-growth”, its CEO has asserted – despite predicting AI won’t take off until 2026.
The Nordic giant’s UK business joined the big leagues in 2024 as its double swoop on Servium and CCS Media more than tripled its local revenue runrate to over £450m (with client numbers more than quadrupling to 9,500).
“If we see stronger market conditions, now we can take the breadth of service offerings to 9,500 customers I think we have the opportunity for hyper-growth,” Kneen told IT Channel Oxygen during a wide-ranging interview looking forward to 2025.
“The market’s moving towards our strategy”
The core Advania UK business – which is built around Microsoft-focused managed services – enjoyed “double-digit growth” in 2024 “in a market that’s been tougher than people expected it to be”, Kneen noted.
Asked about his big bets for 2025, Kneen said his top priority is to roll Advania’s “deep service capability” to the enlarged customer base.
Recent partner programme updates by Microsoft and Cisco play into Advania’s hands in this regard by rewarding partners who offer value around the entire technology lifecycle, rather than just at the point of transaction, Kneen claimed.
“If you look at the Cisco changes (see here), and what Microsoft are going to do in 2025 with the changes to Enterprise Agreements (see here, here and here), they’re both looking to consolidate around partners who can truly bring their technology to life,” he explained.
“We see ourselves positioned now not as a VAR or an MSP, but a trusted technology partner to our clients. We don’t want our clients to go anywhere else.
“That’s our strategy, and we believe the market’s been move towards that for quite a long time.”
Kneen picked out embedding and proving the value of AI as a second big bet, before flagging his ambitions to roll its existing services model to more vendors as a final priority area.
“How much professional services do we do around Cisco, HP and Dell at this moment in time?,” he said.
“It’s quite small, but now we’ve got this much larger combined business, it gives us more confidence to invest further into those areas and expand the project work, professional services work, and overall managed services ramp in those areas.”
Asked about when the CCS Media and Servium brands will be phased out, Kneen replied that “we’ll definitely come together through the course of next year”.
“Whilst we’ll bring the businesses together under Advania next year, the brands will still persist in support of the Advania brand as well, because they will still have value,” he added, however.
“I don’t think 2025 will be the mega take-off for AI”
Asked to give his most controversial or thought-provoking predictions for the year ahead, Kneen said he felt it will be at least another 12 months before end-user adoption of AI takes off.
This is despite Advania rolling Microsoft Copilot to its entire workforce in June.
“We went all in with Copilot, and have got some of our own AI solutions over private ChatGPT,” Kneen said.
“I think in 2025 we’re at a position where the market is moving from proof of concept on some AI elements into proof of value.
“So I don’t think 2025 will be the mega take-off for AI. It will probably go steeper into ’26 or ’27.”
Moving onto his second prediction, Kneen said he expects NVIDIA to make a bigger impact on the channel now it has overtaken Microsoft and Apple as the world’s most valuable company.
“I’m interested to see how their proposition matures over the next few years,” Kneen said.
“I don’t quite know how yet, but I think they’ll look at potentially disrupting some of the market models that have existed for a while.”
Finally, Kneen predicted that the channel may be forced to adopt more circular models as soon as next year.
The wider Advania business recently won plaudits from analyst Canalys for its efforts to embrace circular IT through its new Swedish ‘Dreamhouse’ facility.
“That’s something anyone who’s in a role like mine should be watching – and we certainly are,” Kneen said.
“I think that could accelerate and disrupt the way we’re operating even in 2025.
“There are things that could come through from a policy perspective that could change the way everyone has to operate.
“I don’t think that would be a surprise to anyone to say it’s coming. But I think what might surprise everybody is just how quickly it could come.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
