OCSL sells up to German reseller Cancom

£85m-revenue VAR will act as UK hub for Cancom as it ramps up international expansion plans

Germany-based reseller behemoth Cancom has grabbed one of HPE and Microsoft Azure's top UK partners, OCSL, and will use the business as its UK hub.

With revenues topping £80m, OCSL represents Cancom's second UK acquisition this year following its purchase of unified comms specialist and Cisco partner Ocean Intelligent Communications in March.

Cancom today signed a contract to acquire OCSL's parent company, which it said "represents a determined move towards a substantial UK market presence and the international growth of the business".

Headquartered in Munich, listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and headed up by Klaus Weinmann (pictured), Cancom has a turnover exceeding €1bn.

Based in West Sussex, OCSL, meanwhile, has more than 200 employees and ranked 40th in CRN's Top VARs 2017. Its parent company, The Organised Group Limited, hit pre-tax profits of £2.8m on revenues of £85.9m in its year to 31 March 2017.

Cancom claimed the two outfits have a "similar heritage and vision", saying that both have moved into cloud-based and hybrid IT having started off as resellers of hardware and software.

"Our aim is to expand our cloud and managed services business and this requires international structures," said Cancom president Thomas Volk.

"The close co-operation of both new British members of the Cancom family together with the total group, not only offers numerous opportunities in the UK, such as introducing existing and potential clients to our IT infrastructure management software AHP. It also allows us to build a UK-based hub to serve international clients even better than today and it intensifies Cancom's transformation towards becoming an international company."

Note that Cancom's expansion drive comes despite it exiting the UK market in 2012. Back then, its local business was an Apple dealer.

Tim Thrower, founder of OCSL said: "I am delighted that the next stage in OCSL's evolution is to become the UK-based hub of such a large, successful and forward-thinking company as Cancom. OCSL has been on a journey to become a more services and cloud-centric business. Becoming part of the Cancom family will accelerate that future for us.

"I feel we share a good cultural fit and this bodes well for a very exciting future. I would like to thank OCSL's employees for all playing their part in making OCSL the chosen partner for Cancom's future growth in the UK."