Daisy Group Buyout Brings Big Plans For 2015 Under A New Boss

With a management buyout under way, there is a lot of activity at Daisy Group. The company said it needs to recruit more engineers to support a new channel venture and the New Year will see the arrival of a new CEO.

Matthew Riley, Daisy Group’s founder and current CEO will step back from heading the firing line to become executive chairman. Since forming the company in 2001, he has seen annual turnover grow to £350 million and is already restructuring the company for continued growth in 2015.

Partner support

The new thrust in its operations has brought together the expertise of three previously acquired businesses – Indecs, Netcrowd and Servasssure – with the aim of providing  end-to-end technology services to the channel.

The division, Daisy Partner Services, offers a maintenance and professional services capability for the company’s partners. It will help the channel to support customer technology platforms, encompassing server and storage, networking and unified communications.

Lead by managing director Jason Spring, Partner Services will provide its services to augment partners’ own core offerings, providing them with “the growth that they strive for, without the need to invest heavily to increase their resources”.

Spring commented, “While cloud spending is growing at five times the rate of other areas of IT spend, in five years’ time it will still represent less than 10 percent of the whole IT domain. The demand for on-premise services will continue and the channel’s ability to rely on a partner services provider means this is a growth opportunity for Daisy. We are offering our partners the operational capabilities, so they can focus on their customer relationships whilst we keep things running in the background.”

In February, Riley will hand over the reins to Neil Muller (pictured), who is currently Computacenter’s managing director. Riley said the appointment was vital for developing Daisy’s growth in the ICT space, especially its managed services portfolio, an area within which Muller “has a wealth of knowledge”.

Riley said, “This is a very exciting stage in the development of Daisy Group, and we are now perfectly positioned to become the major force in the SME and mid-market IT and business communications industry. With someone as experienced and ambitious as Neil at the helm, I have every confidence that the company will progress to an exciting new level of growth, and I look forward to working closely with him.”