Nottingham IT giant set to top £100m turnover with new acquisition
Jigsaw24, the Nottingham IT solutions business backed by private equity firm NorthEdge Capital, has bought Root6 and Root6 Ltd, the storage, solutions and service provider to media and creative industries.
Root6, based in Soho and Glasgow, provides storage, server and specialist technology solutions and managed services for media and higher education clients such as ITN, BBC, Honda R&D, The Farm and Ravensbourne College. The company has revenues in excess of £10m of which circa 50 per cent are consultancy, own software and managed services.
Root6 has its own proprietary software solution, ContentAgent, that is sold globally and used by most of the leading film, TV and post production companies such as HBO, BBC Sport, NBC, Harvard Business School, Sony, and CBS.
It is anticipated that with the combined strength of Root6 and Jigsaw24, along with the recent adoption of the technology by Avid into its product set there will be an opportunity for more aggressive growth. Jigsaw says the deal will also build on its strategy to increase its level of higher margin, recurring storage, specialist technology and software related services and sales.
Jigsaw24 is based in Nottingham with operations in Manchester and a flagship customer experience and service centre in Soho, London. It is the UK’s largest B2B reseller, integrator and managed service provider of creative technologies based around Apple computer systems, Adobe and Avid software, with a focus on the creative and education markets. Turnover is set to exceed £100m in the year to 30 March 2017.
Martin Balaam, CEO of Jigsaw24, said: “Root6 is a perfect fit for Jigsaw24, with its focus on high end storage, specialist technology solutions and managed services coupled with its ContentAgent proprietary software product it sits well with Avid, Adobe and Apple and elevates our existing technical capabilities for our existing range of services into our creative customer base. Furthermore, with the support of Jigsaw24’s sales and marketing team we are confident that future sales of the ContentAgent software can be significantly enhanced.”
Andrew Skinner
Marcus Hulme-Humphrey, managing director of Root6, said: “We are very excited to be joining the Jigsaw24 Group and are looking forward to working together with Martin and the team to grow the business further and capitalise on the opportunity to help transition the media sector into cloud and datacentric solutions.”
Andrew Skinner, investment manager at NorthEdge Capital, added: “The acquisition is the third for Jigsaw24, following a sustained period of sales growth for the business. The transaction represents delivery of our commitment to increase the proportion of higher margin support and service revenues both through organic growth and strategic acquisitions. The purchase of Root6 strengthens Jigsaw’s offering, and puts the business in an enviable position from which to continue its growth.”
The transaction is the third acquisition following the integration of B2B reseller Square Group in June 2014 and the acquisition of Matrix Software Development in November 2014 which recently launched a world leading cloud based (SaaS) Product Information Management platform, Pimberly, late last year.
