'Increasingly under pressure to grow' - Node4 CEO on risual acquisition

Andrew Gilbert told CRN that acquisition will bring 'like minded' people and help scale the business

Node4 CEO has highlighted that the "pressure" to grow was part of its rationale in acquiring Microsoft Azure Expert MSP risual.

Andrew Gilbert told CRN risual will help "scale" the business as it will bring in "like-minded people" and help Node4 expand into the public sector.

Based in the UK, risual claims to hold 15 Gold-level Microsoft competencies and nine out of 18 Microsoft Advanced Specialisations.

With 170 staff, risual is one of few Azure Expert MSP in the UK and one of only 79 globally.

Gilbert said the current market is "very challenging from an employee perspective", although acquiring risual will help it grow its headcount and capabilities.

He said: "As we're growing quite quickly and as we are seeing the size of opportunities develop and the types of organisations we're working with, we're increasingly under pressure to grow our people base, skill set and competencies.

"In this current market it is a very challenging environment - from an employee perspective - to recruit people and also to get like-minded people that fit culturally and also with skill set.

"Organisations like risual are a way of helping us scale the business from a people perspective and from a capability perspective."

Derby-based midmarket MSP Node4 claims that the acquisition will add skills, experience and revenue to its managed services business, bolster its focus across Microsoft's three cloud platforms and grow its customer base of public and private sector clients.

It also said it will create a Microsoft Centre of Excellence through the acquisition.

Gilbert said the way to achieve this is by bringing skill sets and capabilities together across the group to help a customer across the different Microsoft portfolios.

He added that risual is "very focussed" on Microsoft and is "strong" in the public sector.

He said: "One thing that we liked about risual is that it culturally fits. They have very like-minded people and they have very good technical consulting capability.

"One other capability that we really liked is the fact that they've been very strong in public sector, which is not something that Node4 historically really ventured into.

"It gives us access to a new go-to-market strategy around public sector, it was something that helps us on that journey, get a foothold there and have some credibility."

Gilbert also said that the acquisition should allow the company to grow "in double digits", with there being an opportunity to "scale faster" as a combined group.

He said: "We see demand is there - our challenge is always being able to not oversell and under deliver.

"We will invest more aggressively than maybe risual would have done organically in the Academy side of the business to bring on more people quickly.

"We are very focused on growing the business and it has been growing very well organically. Risual themselves have been growing very well organically, so we still anticipate that we can grow in double digits"