Advania reshuffles CCS Media leadership post acquisition
Finance director Alan Honarmand departed the business while CEO Terry Betts and CCO James Hardy moved to roles within Advania UK
CCS Media has seen a reshuffle in its senior leadership as the business moves towards integration with Advania UK.
Longtime finance director Alan Honarmand has retired from the business, while CEO Terry Betts and chief commercial director James Hardy have moved into the Advania UK business, reporting to CEO Geoff Kneen.
Sources tell CRN the CCS leaders are taking on a reduced role as the reseller integrates more closely with its acquirer.
Betts and Honarmand are no longer listed as directors at CCS as of October 2024, according to Companies House filings.
"The Advania UK and CCS Media teams have been working together closely since the completion of the acquisition.
“Terry Betts and James Hardy remain in their current roles (CEO and CCO) and have joined the Advania UK leadership team reporting to Geoff Kneen,” a representative for Advania UK commented.
“It was always Alan Honarmand’s plan to retire at completion. Alan had been handing over financial management to Richard Vimpany, who now works closely with Andrew Insley, the Advania UK CFO.
“The client-facing teams at Advania UK and CCS Media are already working together proactively to take our broadened collective propositions to market.
“This is being well-received by clients who can see the value in working with a trusted partner that can meet all their technology needs."
Advania moved to acquire CCS in October, with the acquisition completing just a month later and creating a top 20 UK reseller.
This capped an eventful year for the Norway-HQ company, which also acquired Servium in June.
In the Nordics, Advania has been expanding with the buyout of Swedish IT specialist Solv in October 2023 and, just this week, with the purchase of Swedish AV specialist Visuell Teknik.
The end goal is a comprehensive, global channel offering, according to Advania UK CEO Geoff Kneen speaking to CRN recently.
With a background in services, Advania UK’s acquisitions have mostly been aimed at adding a reselling capability, the CEO said.
“Adding that reseller capability and that technology sourcing capability to our MSP and digital transformation heritage was a huge highlight, and to do it in such a big way with not one, but two acquisitions.”
With these two organisations under the Advania banner, Kneen’s priority now is bringing CCS, Servium and Advania together as one business by the end of 2025 and getting the go-to-market strategy right.
“It’s more important to measure additional value to the clients.
“How many clients have we been able to take that digital transformation and MSP service to in the CCS space?”
While Kneen is focused on value for customers, earlier comments from the CEO suggest that the merger with CCS easily placed Advania UK in excess of £450m annual revenue.
Advania UK ranked number 52 in CRN’s Top VARs 2024 list.