Air IT makes another double swoop as it shoots for UK-wide coverage

MSP purchases Concise Technology in the North West and InfoTech Solutions in Kent

Buy-and-build MSP Air IT has made its fifth and sixth acquisitions of the past six months as it continues to bolster its national coverage through M&A.

The Nottingham-based firm has acquired Kent-based MSP InfoTech Solutions and Cheshire-based firm Concise Technologies.

It is the third time in six months that Air IT has announced two acquisitions simultaneously.

The acquisitions add 50 staff and 250 customers to the Air IT business, which now boasts a headcount of 230 employees and 1,250 customers across the UK, according to CEO John Whitty who spoke to CRN.

Air IT only had a headcount of 50 this time last year, the CEO addedm and its revenues have almost quadrupled over the last 12 months.

"From the investment from August Equity we've managed to is find six great businesses that look like, feel like and perform like Air IT, we will join them up together and be able to service the whole of the country."

"Our strategy is to acquire nationally and service locally. So for example, Concise is now our North West hub, and we'll service the whole of the north west from there from an account management and engineering perspective and then we'll benefit from all of the supporting services like marketing, products, research and development, IT, which will be a group function reporting centrally.

"Covid has allowed us to state that a team member doesn't need to be in the same building to be part of a team. So there's no reason now that the marketing team in Concise doesn't form part of the group marketing team because the people can creatively work together from anywhere. That's one of the benefits of us all remote working over the last year, it has provided confidence that a team doesn't need to be together in order to be successful."

Concise Technologies MD David Southern and InfoTech MD Jason Foord will stay on in their respective firms and continue to drive growth.

The acquisitions mean that Air IT now has a foothold across most of the UK - in Thames Valley, the South East, London, East Midlands, West Midlands and the North West.

Whitty said he is confident Air IT will be able to break further ground with acquisitions in the South West, around Bristol, as well as in the North East in order to add to its UK coverage.

"We're confident we'll be able to continue what we started, hopefully at the same rate," he said.

The CEO added that, outside of acquisitions, the Air IT business is on course to achieve organic growth "in the high teens" this year.

The duo of acquisitions marks the fifth and sixth M&A deals conducted by Air IT since October last year, following the firms acquisiton by serial channel investor August Equity in February 2020.

Whitty said that its first duo of acquisitions, acquired six months ago, were fully integrated into the Air IT business last weekend. December's double acquisition will meawhile be integrated into the MSP over the next couple of months, the CEO said.

"What we like to do is integrate as soon as we can - preferably within six months," he said.