London-based IT Lab, which works with McLaren F1 and the British Paralympics Association, has bought Microsoft 2018 Worldwide Partner of the Year, Content and Code, the country’s largest SharePoint partner, for an undisclosed sum.

London-based Content and Code was formed in 2001 and operated as a Microsoft partner, specialising in Microsoft Sharepoint and Office 365.  Last year it reported revenue of £12 million with a net profit of £1.8 million.

The combined company will have a combined turnover of some £60 million and boost the IT Lab team size by 100 to 550 employees operating globally from London, Manchester and Cape Town, serving more than 700 mid-market and enterprise clients.

IT Lab has been backed by private equity firm ECI Partners, which typically invests in deals valued up to £200 million and acquired a majority stake in IT Lab in 2016.

Tim Wallis, founder of Content and Code said: “The demand for IT services is growing at a rapid pace and we had been looking to join forces with another organisation for some time to take advantage of the opportunity.”

Wallis said: “Finding an organisation which could not only help us compete with the bigger providers in the market, but which also shared the same vision, ethos and culture as Content and Code was a challenge until we began talks with IT Lab. It is clear that this new partnership shares all the ambitions and values that we wanted.”

Wallis will now take on a new position of Chief Digital Officer within IT Labs after their acquisition of his company. One of his key roles will be to continue to foster a relationship with Microsoft.

The combined business entity will now provide its clients with a manged services across Microsoft core product offering such as Azure, Office365, Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.

IT Lab Acquisitions Continue

This is not the first Microsoft partner that IT Lab has acquired, in 2015 it purchased JMC a Microsoft partner based in Manchester. Last year it completed the acquisition of cybersecurity specialist Perspective Risk.

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Craig Fellowes, Productivity Sales Director of Microsoft UK, said in a joint release that Content and Code has been a strong partner with the company and that “coupled with IT Lab’s domain and industry expertise [this is] a very promising combination to provide our customers an even more complete solution and support.”

“This new partnership will undoubtedly provide our customers with an additional and credible option to consider when choosing who they want to help migrate, deploy and manage their desktop environment.”