The Oxygen 250 has an increasingly international feel to it, with some 61 firms in it now either headquartered outside of the UK or owned by overseas companies.
But this trend runs both ways, with many top UK-headquartered resellers and MSPs continuing to break new ground abroad.
Computacenter is now “the most [internationally] diverse reseller in the world”,
CEO Mike Norris claimed at Sumner Robertson’s Channel Chat Live event in September.
The 3rd-ranked outfit’s global sales topped £10bn in 2023 thanks mainly to its breakneck US expansion.
“We’re the largest VAR in California. I get a kick out of that,” Norris said.
Softcat has also been dropping hints it may ramp up its overseas business, which currently accounts for around 5% of its gross invoiced income.
“It’s very hard to predict in five years from now whether that 5% might become 6% or 7%, or it could be 15% if we suddenly accelerate it inorganically,” Graham Charlton, CEO of the top-ranked outfit, told us in October.
“All options are open to us.”
Overseas overdrive
That pattern is being mirrored across the wider Oxygen 250, however, as ambitions resellers and MSPs continue to ramp up their overseas presence to better serve the needs of UK customers, or prospect for new ones.
95th-ranked Xalient made two overseas acquisitions in calendar 2023 in the shape of US Integral Partners and Belgian Grabowsky, while 72nd-ranked Connect now generates half of its top line from overseas on the back of US and South African expansion.
91st-ranked Inoapps and 123rd-ranked DSP are among the Oracle partners that have made big North American acquisitions recently (with the former generating just £13.8m of its £53.6m revenues from the UK in its latest year).
Fears of geopolitical tensions and rising tariffs may also fuel a rise in ‘friendshoring’, Robin Ody, principal analyst at Canalys (pictured above) predicted.
“I’d be very interested to see how many private-equity backed MSPs, SIs and resellers acquire US-based companies over the next year or two, in some cases to guard against potential political changes in the US,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“I’m hearing more and more from financial analysts about the potential growth from the UK to the US of what’s being called friendshoring. Essentially, this is companies acquiring in the US to have a base there, so they don’t suffer from the perception they’re European or UK-based.”
