From Broadcom to Exertis: The biggest channel stories of 2024

At the end of a mixed year in the UK IT sector, CRN reflects on the stories that shifted the course of business over the past 12 months

It’s been a long 12 months in the UK channel – after many upheavals, some of the biggest businesses in the IT sector now look dramatically different from this same time last year.

Many companies made strategic moves to secure their position in the channel, while other grappled with the effects of a volatile economy and changing tech consumption trends.

As a result, M&A, senior entries and exits and plenty of vendor shifts dominated the news agenda.

In the final days of the year, we round up the biggest stories that shook the IT sector in 2024 – in chronological order.

Broadcom takes strategic accounts direct

January kicked off with a dramatic shakeup that would set the tone for much of Broadcom’s relationship with the channel for the rest of the year.

A week into the year, the vendor issued a partner notice that it was taking VMware’s top accounts – about 2,000 in total – direct, effective immediately.

This came on the heels of the vendor announcing two weeks prior that it would terminate VMware’s partner programme, and it planned to invite selected partners to return.

While Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has remained steadfast in his strategy for the acquiree, the new approach has opened up inroads for competitors to work more closely with disgruntled partners.

Boxxe buys Total Computers

Later in January, boxxe made a decisive acquisition move – what would turn out to be the first drop in a deluge throughout 2024 – by buying out Total Computers.

CEO Phil Doye told CRN at the time that the two businesses’ complementary books, service propositions and existing relationship (Doye first invested in Total the year prior) made for an easy decision.

The combined business has seen some minor executive shifts and is now in pursuit of the next milestone - $1bn in annual revenue.

Murphy resigns from Bytes

Not even two months into the year came the next major shift – Neil Murphy, longtime Bytes Technology Group CEO, unexpectedly resigned from his role, citing “undisclosed trades” and seeking to distance the business from the controversy.

Longtime Bytes cadre Samantha Mudd (pictured) stepped up to lead the business as interim CEO, capping off a year of growth.

But some damage was done – Bytes shares dipped significantly on the announcement.

Since then, Mudd has gone a long way to steady the ship.

After she was confirmed as permanent CEO in May, the business continued to grow GII through its services and diversify across partners.

NVIDIA invests in Cohesity

March brought big news from NVIDIA (only the first of many) as the GPU vendor became an investor in security developer Cohesity.

The funding was part of Cohesity’s Series F round.

NVIDIA was later joined by IBM as a roster of tech giants - Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Amazon, Google, and Qualcomm - placed their trust as strategic investors in the company.

In March, however, all eyes were on NVIDIA itself. And rightly so as the “grandfather of AI” announced a flurry of tech partnerships and was on the road to briefly becoming a $3tn valuation company later in the year.

Saepio comes under new management

IT service provider Saepio entered a new era in April when tech veterans Amir Nooriala and Daniel Cardenas-Clark acquired the business.

The move signalled an ambitious growth strategy for the cybersecurity solutions provider. With decades of channel expertise under their belts, the new leadership team wasted no time outlining their plans to scale Saepio’s services and deepen its market penetration.

ALSO and Westcoast merge

July brought the next blockbuster announcement as Germany-HQ ALSO Group swooped in to acquire top four UK distie Westcoast.

Westcoast chair Joe Hemani became a shareholder in ALSO, and a swath of executive changes were set to follow, as the merger integration was set to create a major pan-European distribution player.

Westcoast had been on its own acquisition journey up to that point, having merged with German counterpart KOMSA less than two years prior.

Trouble at Storm

In August, we revealed that top VAR, Storm Technologies’ precarious financial situation had led to redundancies at the firm, with at least 25 laid off and around 70 people at the Watford-based business up for redundancies.

The news came as several industry sources confirmed to CRN that multiple distributors had pulled their credit lines with the Watford-HQ business and anonymous employees alleged miscommunication around the redundancies.

While Storm Technologies declined to comment, the story underscored growing challenges within the IT channel amid economic uncertainty.

Trustmarque CRO exits after 60 days

The trouble continued in September as CRN exclusively reported that Trustmarque CRO Calvin Goom had left the role, just two months after stepping into it.

Goom joined the IT services provider in July from business consulting firm Smart/tasking.

According to sources, Goom’s employment was terminated, however Goom himself told CRN his departure was a “mutual agreement” between himself and Trustmarque, driven by “personal reasons”.

He also felt it was a “misalignment of culture” but wished the business all the best.

He replaced Donavan Hutchinson, who left the CRO post in March after just 12 months to pursue his DEI consultancy venture, D&A Services International.

Advania swoops in on CSS

The M&A just kept coming. In October, Norwegian reseller Advania, which had only entered the UK market two years before with the purchase of Content+Cloud, acquired fellow top VAR, CCS Media.

CCS made for a great, established acquisition for Advania, as an independent IT solution specialist with over 41 years of experience.

The acquisition represented an important advancement in Advania’s strategy to becoming the preferred end-to-end IT services provider in Northern Europe, the two businesses said at the time.

The merger closed in November, with Advania UK CEO, Geoff Kneen, telling CRN: “With CCS's breadth across in terms of the scale of the business and how we can operate across the whole UK market, with relationships with over 2,000 vendors, we knew that [it] was going to fit that gap that we had in our service offering perfectly well.”

Exertis goes up for sale

November brought equally high-profile M&A news, with Exertis parent DCC announcing an impending strategic review in the next 24 months following a pivot to a more lucrative sector.

In a strategy update, LSE-listed DCC announced plans to switch focus to its energy business.

The FTSE 100-listed company said it believed its energy business presents the “largest growth opportunity” at strong returns, available to the group.

While the move was unexpected, UK distribution players largely welcomed it as the right move for the distie, but raised questions around the complex nature of the business.

Exertis CEO Tim Griffiin himself revealed he will be laser-focused on finding the right buyer for the business, and that he was not ruling out a business restructure to create that alignment.

“We're looking at this from a global perspective. The ideal buyer will understand our international footprint and see the value in our diverse geographic presence,” the CEO said at the time.