8. Trustmarque

UK revenue: £498.7m

Trustmarque continues to be a key player in the UK IT channel, and its inclusion in CRN’s Top VARs 2025 list reflects both its financials and its evolution into a more services-led business. Now led by CEO Simon Williams, the firm is navigating a period of reinvention, marked by leadership changes and a sharpened focus on deeper, more strategic engagements with customers.

The company, which employs between 550 and 600 people, has seen a number of senior departures over the past year. Former CIO Simon Leuty stepped down to launch an artificial intelligence start-up, while ex-CRO Calvin Goom exited in September 2024 after just 60 days in the role. He had succeeded Donavan Hutchinson, who left the business after a year to focus on his DEI consultancy, D&A Services International. In December, Tanaz Gould stepped into the CRO role, and is now steering Trustmarque’s shift towards “more strategic” relationships with customers and partners.

According to Williams, 2025 is about repositioning Trustmarque with a clear message: “optimise to innovate.” The new tagline underpins the company’s transformation from a predominantly product-focused reseller into a provider of end-to-end, value-driven IT services. “As part of our change last year, it's also very much moving towards having more of a services-led, more strategic relationship with our partners and with our customers,” Williams told CRN. “Our percentage of services versus product has materially changed.”

Williams is putting big bets on the "optimise to innovate" philosophy, which centres on saving clients significant sums through software licence and cloud cost optimisation—typically between 20 and 40 percent of their spend. That savings pot is then reinvested in innovation, from Microsoft Copilot rollouts to IBM watsonx adoption. “I want people to say, ‘You’re the company that does optimise to innovate. Can you help us?’” he said. “And then we help them deliver it.”

This services-led model is not just about technology execution, but full lifecycle management. “A lot of companies don’t decommission old systems,” Williams noted. “So, we help with that, and then with adoption and implementation. If you don’t use it, you don’t get the value. If you don’t decommission, you don’t get the value. If it’s not implemented properly, you don’t get the value.”

That desire to add more long-term value is reshaping the kind of work Trustmarque takes on. “Historically, a project for us might have been that the client wants to build some new Microsoft BI reporting, and we’ll go in and we’ll do that,” Williams explained. “What we’re doing now is managing the entire integration of companies that our clients are acquiring, from a Microsoft or network perspective.”

The strategy is already showing signs of impact: “We have one measure, which is doing five lines of business with a client. In the last year, we've more than doubled the number of clients where we do five lines of business,” he said.

While Trustmarque continues to serve its traditional base in the public sector—earning accolades like Public Sector Partner of the Year at the 2024 CRN Channel Awards for its work with the HFEA—its future growth will be fuelled by these larger, more strategic engagements. Williams’ goal is to make Trustmarque synonymous with optimisation-led transformation. “To have a brand presence around that would be amazing,” he said.