S2s prepares for channel suitors

Cisco VAR looks for potential firms to be acquired by, just a month after achieving Gold certification

Cisco’s latest UK gold partner is looking to sell up to a larger rival in the next 12 months.

Crawley-based s2s secured Cisco’s top accreditation in February, but told CRN that it is currently holding informal talks with potential suitors.

Scott Nursten, managing director of s2s, said it was “quite likely” the VAR would be acquired this year, but stressed that he was keen to maintain some degree of autonomy for the firm.

“BT purchased a couple of resellers, smashed them together and put them under one roof,” he said. “That’s not the sort of thing I would be interested in. We do business in a strong and certain way, which would be more in line with companies such as Calyx, 2e2 and Redstone.”

Nick Grossman, business development director at 2e2, said: “S2s has been successful at building up a good pool of expertise in specific technologies and will increasingly become attractive to a number of people looking for these niche skills.”

John Pepper, managing director of Cisco gold partner Minx, said: “S2s is heavily specialised in the security arena, so a larger integrator could easily buy it to create a security unit or beef up an existing security unit.”