Spinnakar latest VAD to sell up in deal worth at least £9.8m

It comes as Wayside looks to expand its EMEA reach and strengthen product offerings

US firm Wayside Technology Group has acquired its second UK distributor inside two years in the form of start-up VAD Spinnakar.

Wayside says it has completed its acquisition of the Arcserve, Cloudian and Deep Instinct distributor for an aggregate purchase price of £9.8m payable at closing plus a potential post-closing earn-out.

Windsor headquartered Spinnakar is focused on storage, cloud, security and data management businesses.

It is the latest VAD to be snapped up by Wayside, which bought the parent company of Sigma Software Distribution (now Climb Channel Solutions) in 2020.

Spinnakar will integrate with Climb UK as part of the deal, with founder and CEO Gerard Brophy continuing to lead and scale its EMEA business.

Wayside, a value-added IT distribution and solutions company, says acquiring the VAD will bring scale and channel expertise to the company as well as more than 15 vendor partners.

These include Cloudian, Deep Instinct, efficient IP, Gurucul, Hammerspace, Highside, iPortalis, komprise, Logicgate, Morpheus, Packetfabric, Recorded Future, rubrik, Secureauth, Storone, Vast, Arcserve, Virtuozzo and AVMS.

"Spinnakar's founders have a proven pedigree of over 40 years in building successful IT distribution businesses and bringing emerging vendors to market, where they have experienced exceptional growth," said Wayside CEO Dale Foster.

"Their European line card includes several vendors that we represent in the US, while also bringing several new key vendors such as Vast Data that provide significant cross-sell opportunities.

"Their deep knowledge and expertise in storage, cloud, security and data management match up seamlessly with our key verticals of focus. We expect this acquisition to be accretive to gross margin and net income, boosting both growth and profitability going forward."

Brophy added he is "thrilled" to be teaming up with Climb and is "looking forward to scaling the integrated business across EMEA".

He said: "As a new member of the team, I plan to further expand our line card through our combined expertise and shared vision of bringing new, innovative companies to market through our global network."

Spinnakar is the latest VAD to sell up recently, with Ignition Technology having been acquired by Exclusive Networks last year.

Exclusive bills Ignition Technology as a specialist security distributor focusing on emerging vendors.

It claimed the acquisition will create a "dedicated operation" focused on younger vendors looking to break into the global market.

In a separate deal in 2021, Nuvias acquired Cloud Distribution in a move to expand its emerging technologies business in the UK.

Cloud Distribution has continued as a standalone business following the deal, with its branding changing slightly to "Cloud Distribution, a Nuvias company".