The monthly briefing for IT services founders, investors, and M&A advisors.
In This Edition
This month I keep having the same conversation. A founder or an investor describes a roll-up: a platform, a thesis, a few add-ons, and then asks the same thing, will it actually become a company, or just a collection of them? That question runs through this entire edition. I have written the full playbook into a new whitepaper, and I spoke with Frank Strecker, who built Skaylink into a European platform under Waterland and sold it to Vodafone.
Five minutes. That is all you need. Let's go.
What I See Right Now · Why most IT services roll-ups fail
Featured Whitepaper · The Buy and Build playbook for IT services
Expert Spotlight · Frank Strecker on building and selling Skaylink
Deal Radar · The deals that fit the theme, plus the integration pattern
On My Radar · The reports behind the arbitrage argument, and where I will be
What I See Right Now
Why Most IT Services Roll-Ups Fail, and What Operator-Led Looks Like
Another month, another European IT services roll-up. A platform, a thesis, a few add-ons, a press release about building a champion. Most of them will not get there. Not because the thesis is wrong, but because buying companies and building a company are two different jobs, and the second one is the hard one.
I learned that from the inside. As COO and CFO we scaled Cloudflight from 25 million to 100 million in revenue and exited at 400 million to Partners Group. The acquisitions were the easy part. Almost none of the value came from the purchase price. It came from what we did in the eighteen months after each deal closed.
Here is where roll-ups die.
They mistake arbitrage for value.
Small IT services companies trade at roughly 6 to 8 times EBITDA. At platform scale the same earnings are worth 10 to 13 times. That spread is the headline of every Buy and Build deck, and it is real. But it only pays out if the companies actually become one company. If they do not, you own a bag of small companies at a small-company multiple, and the re-rating you underwrote never arrives. Arbitrage is also the smaller half of the return. The bigger half is margin, recurring revenue, cross-sell, and productised delivery. None of that is bought. All of it is built.
They accumulate instead of integrate.
The platforms quietly winning are not winning on sourcing. They are winning on a repeatable integration playbook: one sales motion, one delivery standard, one set of systems, eventually one brand. Look at who is doing the work. Teccle is folding its acquisitions into a single brand. Connexta is absorbing its thirteenth member into one delivery group. Medialine is taking on carve-outs and running them as part of the whole. The press release is the start of the job, not the end of it.
They leave founder dependence in place.
The thing that turns a 5 million founder-led shop into a platform-grade asset is removing the founder as the single point of failure. That is counterintuitive, so let me say it plainly: your value to a serious buyer rises the more replaceable you make yourself. Recurring revenue, no client above twenty percent, delivery that does not rest on three key people, processes written down. Those four levers are what the multiple actually pays for.
They integrate onto a melting iceberg.
You are not just merging companies. You are merging them into an operating model that has to survive the shift from billable hours to outcomes. A platform built on the old time-and-material logic is consolidating its way into a structural problem. The window to fix that is the same twelve to eighteen months I keep coming back to.
For founders, this is the only question that matters when a platform comes calling: are they buying you to integrate you, or to park you? For investors, it is the line between a roll-up and a champion. I have put the full playbook, the four levers and a platform-or-add-on decision aid, into this month's whitepaper.
"You do not create value by buying companies. You create it by turning ten companies into one. That is an operating discipline, not a financial one."
Whitepaper
The Buy and Build Whitepaper for IT Services
Why roll-ups fail · arbitrage versus value · the first 100 days · the four levers · platform or add-on
The full operator's playbook behind this month's note. 20 pages, set against two decades of M&A research from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Free download.
Frank Strecker: Building and Selling a European Platform
Frank Strecker
CEO, Skaylink
Frank built Skaylink into one of Europe's leading cloud and managed services providers as a Waterland-backed Buy and Build, through to its acquisition by Vodafone, where he continues as CEO. Earlier he led global cloud computing at T-Systems and Deutsche Telekom for more than a decade, and before that at IBM.
IT Capital Partners: You built Skaylink into a leading European cloud and managed services platform under Waterland through a programmatic Buy and Build. Looking back, how much of the value came from the acquisitions themselves, and how much from what you did with them afterwards?
Frank Strecker: Every key ingredient, the capabilities, the skills, the customer relationships, came from the acquisitions. They brought substantial value from day one: strong customer bases, trusted relationships, highly skilled experts. That foundation was critical for our growth. But the real value creation came afterwards, in turning those individual pieces into one cohesive platform and giving Skaylink its own identity. That is fundamentally about culture. We integrated people, processes, and capabilities across the group and, just as importantly, built a shared culture that let people work together across the old company boundaries. The deals gave us the parts. The work after the deals made them one company.
IT Capital Partners: Most IT services roll-ups never become a single company. From the inside, what separates a platform that truly integrates from one that just accumulates? What did you standardise first?
Frank Strecker: We started with the customer. Everyone at Skaylink bought into the idea that clients expect one consistent "Skaylink look and feel." From there we built the organisation step by step, including standardising core tools such as a single CRM platform. Throughout the integration I kept asking one question: how does this improve value for our customers? That mindset guided the decisions on services, offerings, and organisational design.
But integration is ultimately about people. A shared culture is a long-term effort that has to be shown every day, through leadership and behaviour, which is why we set guiding principles such as "Customer Dedication," "We are Skaylink," and "Combined Power." Culture alone is not enough, of course. We also standardised core processes, delivery models, and tools early, to create transparency, scalability, and a consistent experience across the platform.
IT Capital Partners: Skaylink moved from a PE-backed platform to part of Vodafone. Why a strategic home rather than the next financial owner, and what changes for a platform once a strategic acquirer is behind it?
Frank Strecker: In truth, that is often shaped more by how a process unfolds than by any single decision. That said, Vodafone was the ideal strategic partner, because Skaylink fits directly into its growth strategy. Vodafone wants to expand its B2B business beyond connectivity into digital services, and for that it needs strong professional and managed services capabilities. That gap is now effectively closed with Skaylink.
A strategic owner also looks beyond the next investment cycle. That creates planning certainty for innovation, product development, and capability building, so management can invest with a longer horizon against a clear roadmap. Skaylink also gains Vodafone's brand, customer reach, and sales network, which unlock growth that would be hard to achieve alone. For a platform business, joining a strategic acquirer means shifting from building scale on your own to drawing on a broader ecosystem, while keeping the entrepreneurial, customer-focused culture that drove the success in the first place.
IT Capital Partners: For a founder weighing whether to sell into a platform, what should they actually evaluate in the buyer? And what is the hardest adjustment a founder has to make once they are inside one?
Frank Strecker: It comes down to two levels: your personal objectives, and the future of your company and your people. Beyond the financials, a founder should ask honestly whether they truly believe in the buyer's vision, and how their organisation and their people fit into it. The strategic roadmap, the cultural fit, and the long-term role of the company within the platform are the critical factors.
The hardest adjustment is accepting that it is no longer solely your company. Decisions increasingly sit within a broader governance structure, and others will sometimes decide things differently than you would have. Succeeding in that environment means moving from full control to collaboration, and learning to influence outcomes without always having the final say.
IT Capital Partners: We have written about the shift from billable hours to outcomes and about cloud sovereignty. How do those two forces change what a European IT services platform is worth, and what a buyer should be building?
Frank Strecker: I see both as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Customers increasingly expect business outcomes rather than purely resource-based services, and many European organisations now put more weight on sovereignty, security, and regulation. But markets rarely move in a straight line. Traditional consumption models are still highly relevant, particularly in the mid-market.
So buyers should build platforms that combine operational excellence with adaptability: strong capabilities in cloud, data, security, and managed services, and the flexibility to deliver and price them in different ways. Value is created by solving customer problems, not by following buzzwords. The one shift I would not call evolutionary is AI. It will significantly transform both professional and managed services in the near term, and companies should actively embrace it and drive AI adoption across how they deliver.
IT Capital Partners: What is the single lesson from building and selling Skaylink that you would give to anyone trying to build a European IT services champion right now?
Frank Strecker: Especially in a private equity setting, you cannot fully anticipate the timing or the identity of the next owner. So the most important thing is to build a strong, successful company with its own identity, culture, and clear value proposition. That is what ultimately attracts interest. A company that is coherent in strategy, strong in execution, and aligned in culture creates the best foundation there is, not only for growth, but for attracting the right partners or buyers when the time comes.
Deal Radar
My picks since mid-May, with last month's headline names stripped out to avoid repeats. What remains is a dense run of mid-market consolidation, and the signal is the cleanest all year: integration over accumulation.
🧩 Medialine takes over Heidelberg iT's system-house business • effective 1 June 2026
Medialine, a roughly 700-person, 20-site IT services group, absorbed the system-house business of Heidelberg iT, including staff, customers, and partner relationships. Heidelberg iT keeps its data centre, colocation, and security business and runs it independently. A clean carve-out: the seller keeps the asset-heavy infrastructure, the platform takes the services and the people. This is how mid-market consolidation actually happens, one capability at a time, not in one grand merger.
☁️ Connexta adds its thirteenth member, Premier Experts • June 2026
Connexta welcomed Premier Experts, a roughly 50-person Microsoft specialist from the Nuremberg area, with strength in Azure, M365, the Power Platform, and security. Founder Martin Thiem stays on. Textbook add-on: a specialist capability folded into a group that already has the delivery backbone, with the founder retained through the transition. Note the framing, thirteenth member. The number is not the point. Whether thirteen become one is.
🤝 Abacus alpha takes over the Oracle specialist merlin.zwo • announced 21 May 2026
merlin.zwo, a Karlsruhe-based Oracle specialist founded in 1998 with around 25 staff and more than 500 customers in the upper mid-market and public sector, sold 100 percent to Abacus alpha, a Palatinate impact investor. Founders Jochen Kutscheruk and Stefan Winkler stay on as managing directors to steer the generational handover themselves. Textbook succession: a deep, narrow capability kept whole, the team retained, and the owners managing the transition rather than exiting it. The point is continuity, not just a change of shareholder.
🎫 Nexoware buys Visoma Tickets and consolidates the tooling layer • 8 June 2026
Nexoware, the Ulm software group LEA Partners built at the end of 2025 out of c-entron, DocBee, ElectronicSales, and docuFORM, acquired Visoma, one of the most widely used ticketing systems among German system houses. Founder Mike Bergmann and managing director Florian Talg stay on, and Visoma will be merged with the group's existing DocBee system onto a single AI and automation platform. This is consolidation one layer up: not the service providers themselves, but the software they all run on. When the tools converge, the market they serve tends to follow.
🔗 GBC Group adds NetzConcepte and Furtok media in one week • June 2026
Pride Capital-backed GBC Group welcomed two companies in the same week. NetzConcepte in Bad Arolsen is the eleventh acquisition, bringing managed services, IT outsourcing, security, and consulting. Furtok media in Solingen adds deep DATEV and PARTNERasp expertise, cloud, and roughly 800 accounting firms and their clients. Both founders stay on, both locations remain. The number that matters is not eleven, it is that each managing director keeps running the business inside the group while the platform supplies the wider portfolio and reach. That is what an eleventh deal looks like when the first ten actually integrated.
🧱 NOBIX Group acquires blackpoint, its third add-on of 2026 • June 2026
Backed by Liberta Partners, the NOBIX Group picked up blackpoint, a roughly 30-person digitalisation specialist strong in customer experience, CRM, cloud, and security. It is NOBIX's third acquisition this year, after netmin computer and ALBAKOM. Liberta frames the plan plainly: build a leading managed services provider for the German Mittelstand. Three deals in one year is the easy part to announce. The question this edition keeps returning to is whether netmin, ALBAKOM, and now blackpoint become one company or three logos on a slide. The roll-up only re-rates if they converge.
🌐 synaforce acquires Fairbanks International, including 42on (Netherlands) • June 2026
synaforce, an Afinum portfolio company, acquired the Fairbanks International Group, one of Europe's most established open-source cloud specialists across OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ceph, and Linux, including its Ceph storage arm 42on. The deal opens the Netherlands as a third market after the Swiss entry via ServerBase, and brings a clean VMware to open-source migration path at exactly the moment enterprises want one. The detail I like is the stated integration discipline: Fairbanks and 42on keep their names and teams in phase one, with a coordinated brand roadmap to follow, the same sequence synaforce used in Switzerland. Sovereign, open-source infrastructure is becoming a platform category, and this is how you build one across borders without breaking what you bought.
Also noteworthy, integration in motion: Possehl Digital takes a stake in Viakom to build sovereign cloud and managed services for the Northern German Mittelstand • DPE Deutsche Private Equity buys a majority in NTA Systemhaus from Adiuva Capital, continuing a security and IT infrastructure buy and build across DACH • CONVOTIS Schweiz adds GLAUX Group in Bern for E-Government, the latest stop on a Swiss buying tour after JMC, Sowatec, Innofind, Swiss Cloud Computing, and Aspectra • synaforce also folds in hns for network, telecoms, and data centre operations • Communardo adds Norway's Computas Opus, an Atlassian Platinum partner, extending the Nordic platform it began with Aety • ACG Group acquires Switzerland's Cybex Digital for IT service management • FLEXiCODE acquires Finland's Aveso Oy to deepen IFS Cloud • Trimetis acquires Warsaw-based SuperDevs, taking the combined group past €50M in application development • Your.Cloud adds Danthas ICT and, through Kreuze, EQUA Electronics, two more Dutch MSP add-ons in primary healthcare and SME connectivity • VRS acquires Soft Agile for manufacturing execution software in regulated production • Teccle renamed Schuster & Walther to Teccle Flow on its way to a single brand across roughly 700 staff in 19 cities (19 May 2026) • the Emvion group brought five firms (Sälker, MDSI, RF Computer, Venabo, Pramux) under one brand and 160-plus staff. The through line is the same as the headline deals: the press release is the start of the work, not the end of it.
The Pattern I See
The same move, made over and over this month: stop running your acquisitions as a federation and start running them as a company. Teccle is collapsing its brands into a single identity. GBC keeps each founder in place while folding its eleventh company into one group. synaforce enters new countries one at a time and integrates them on the same published roadmap each time. NOBIX is on its third add-on of the year. This is the unglamorous work that separates a platform from a holding company, and it is exactly what this month's whitepaper is about. The deal that makes the headline is rarely the deal that makes the value. The integration that follows is.
On My Radar
What I Am Tracking
Worth Reading
Carlsquare, IT Services Outlook 2026
The clearest current map of where the value pools and buyer priorities sit: recurring revenue, regulated-industry know-how, cloud certifications, scalable delivery, and talent density. The buyer-side companion to this month's whitepaper.
The long-run multiple data behind the arbitrage argument, including the size effect that lifts the same earnings from a single-digit multiple at small scale toward the low teens at platform scale.
If anything in this edition resonated, I would love to hear from you. Whether you are assembling a platform, weighing an offer, or simply want a second read on a buyer who has come knocking, my door is always open.
If you are building, integrating, or considering an exit in IT services, I have probably sat in a version of your seat already. Drop me a line.
