Qodea’s acquisition of US peer Beyond marks “a very interesting change for us as a business”, its CEO has asserted as he trailed plans to make three more acquisitions.
Marlin Equity-backed Google ally Qodea this morning announced it has acquired 100-employee Beyond from Next 15 for an undisclosed sum.
The Qodea brand was only born last September following the 2023 union of similar-sized Google partners CTS and Appsbroker.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Qodea CEO Alan Paton revealed that the Manchester-based company is looking to double in size this year, with a further acquisition set to take place “within ten days”, and two more lined up.
“We are impatient to capitalise on the opportunity in front of us and are moving at pace,” Paton said.
“Very interesting change for us as a business”
As well as extending Qodea’s core business, Beyond works in the AdTech and MediaTech world and has “a couple of very prestigious agentic AI customers”, Paton said.
It counts Google, Snap and Meta among its clients.
“What’s interesting about these clients is they are at the bleeding edge of technology, and now we’re serving them – it’s a very interesting change for us as a business,” Paton said.
New York-based Beyond carries out a lot of its cloud, data and AI work at a nearshore centre in Lisbon, Paton indicated.
“Right now, we are an onshored business where everything comes from continental Europe to deliver services. I think that’s something that in the latter part of the year we will look at,” Paton said.
“We’re joining Europe’s leading Google Cloud partner to build a new kind of technology company designed to help businesses stay ahead,” Beyond CEO Matt Iliffe said in a canned statement.
“Slightly annoying” Google changes
Despite branding them “slightly annoying”, Paton said recent Google resale incentive changes that have dented numbers at large software houses such as Insight haven’t overly troubled Qodea.
“It’s not particularly impactful to us because we’re becoming a very large professional services business that competes with large-scale, legacy providers who have their own set of challenges,” Paton said.
“Since I’ve been here, our number-one focus has been to grow our professional and managed services business. The scale of our projects is tripling in size, which has some challenges, but all our growth is coming from tier-one customers.”
This means that Qodea’s core Google Cloud business is growing at “an unprecedented rate”, Paton said.
Paton said he “can’t say enough good things about Wiz”, the fast-growing cloud security vendor with which Qodea recently inked a partnership, and which sells mainly with partners via hyperscaler marketplaces.
How important are hyperscaler marketplaces to Qodea?
“It’s an important place for customers who have large commitments with the hyperscalers who want to retire their quotas. But it’s probably not that important to us as a transactional medium,” Paton responded.
“We’re walking the corridors of prestigious tech companies”
Paton said he “can’t quite get my head around what we managed to pull off” with the Beyond deal.
“Here we have two companies formed in the UK who are now breaking into North America,” he said.
“We’re walking the corridors of prestigious tech companies and providing services to them.
“Our business was primarily focused on the big financial institutions, automotive, manufacturing, heavy industry, as well as some media like WPP.
“But this changes the dynamic of our portfolio. It’s great for our people who want to work on international projects or with exciting tech companies.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
