The 50 leaders shaping the UK technology channel
Vendor, distribution and MSP leaders, and the rising names behind them, recognized for what they’ve built this year, not for their job titles. Chosen and ranked by the VETTDD editorial team from company results, filings and announcements, September 2026.
Graham Charlton
Chief Executive, Softcat
Softcat’s gross invoiced income passed £2bn in the six months to January 2026, up 33.3%, as hardware sales rose 78.7% on AI infrastructure demand. Under Charlton, chief executive since August 2023, the company raised its profit guidance three times this year and in September agreed to buy Dallas-based GDT for $1.05bn (£785m). The deal takes the UK channel’s bellwether reseller into the US.
Mike Norris
Chief Executive Officer, Computacenter
Computacenter’s revenue rose 71.6% to £6.85bn in the first half of 2026 and adjusted profit before tax rose 87% to £152.4m, as hyperscale and neocloud customers in North America drove a record £9.3bn order backlog. The company joined the FTSE 100 in June and expects full-year profit of at least £380m. Under Norris, chief executive since 1994, it has become the channel’s clearest proof that AI infrastructure spending is flowing through partners.
Sam Mudd
Chief Executive Officer, Bytes Technology Group
Mudd has led Bytes since May 2024 through Microsoft’s shift of partner incentives toward consumption-based and service-led funding. In the year to February 2026 gross invoiced income rose 11.5% to £2.34bn, with services up 24.6%. She then split the group cleanly into private-sector Bytes and public-sector Phoenix. By September, first-half gross invoiced income was up about 19% and guidance was raised. Bytes is the purest listed read on the UK Microsoft licensing channel.
Simon Williams
Chief Executive Officer, Trustmarque Ultima
Williams completed the merger of Trustmarque and Ultima in November 2025, creating a group with more than 1,000 staff, 3,000 customers and, as reported by IT Channel Oxygen, £742m of pro-forma gross sales. In September 2026 he relaunched it as TMU and said its Cisco business had grown 93% in a year. The combined group targets more than £1bn in gross invoiced income and ranks among the largest independent integrators in the UK.
Charles Nasser
Founder and CEO, Claranet
In June 2026 Nasser, who founded Claranet in 1996, bought UK managed services provider Six Degrees, taking the enlarged group to 3,500 staff and, Claranet says, more than €650m (£565m) of revenue. About 200 Six Degrees employees moved across. The deal adds UK scale to a pan-European managed service provider that Nasser has built over three decades, through around 40 acquisitions of its own.
Rich Thompson
Chief Executive Officer, ANS
ANS became the first UK partner to earn Microsoft’s Frontier Partner designation in March 2026, four months after being named Microsoft’s UK Partner of the Year. Under Thompson, chief executive since October 2022, it bought data specialist Makutu and Business Central partner Sci-Net in 2025, adding 90 staff. Its 2024 accounts show adjusted EBITDA up 11% to £30.5m on turnover of £132.8m. ANS gives UK partners a working model of what Microsoft’s AI partner tiers require.
Penny Williams
SVP and Managing Director, UK and International, CDW UK
CDW’s UK and Canadian operations grew sales 22.9% to $826m (£618m) in the second quarter of 2026. Under Williams, managing director since October 2024, CDW UK signed an MoD support contract for the RAF’s Poseidon fleet, became prime IT supplier to the 2027 Ryder Cup and hired new heads of managed services and private-sector sales. Her push into services puts a US-backed reseller in more direct competition with UK integrators for large, complex contracts.
Ursula Morgenstern
CEO, Littlefish Group
Morgenstern, Littlefish’s chief executive since September 2024, bought Microsoft-focused security specialist Stripe OLT in February 2026, taking the Nottingham group to about 900 staff and adding penetration testing and SOC services. She has rebuilt the business as Littlefish Group around managed services, security, digital and data, and set a target of growing revenue from about £80m to £150m within three years. Her strategy is to scale a mid-market MSP through sector focus and targeted acquisitions.
Rob Coupland
Chief Executive Officer, Pulsant
Coupland, Pulsant’s chief executive since 2019, refinanced its debt facilities to £187m in October 2025, then opened a £10m, 1.2MW high-density data hall in Milton Keynes in February 2026 and put £1m into AI-ready capacity in Birmingham in September. His 14-site platformEDGE network gives MSPs and resellers regional, sovereign infrastructure to build services on without owning it, and positions Pulsant for AI inference outside the constrained London market.
Sherry Vaswani
Founder and CEO, Xalient
Xalient, the identity, security and networking integrator Vaswani founded, grew revenue 63% to £85.0m in 2024, with 71% earned outside the UK after acquisitions in the US and the Netherlands. Adjusted EBITDA rose 47% to £5.9m. In 2026 she is steering the business toward machine identities, AI and operational technology security. Xalient is a rare UK channel business whose biggest market is the US, and a guide for partners planning to follow.
Michelle Senecal de Fonseca
Chief Executive Officer, Redcentric
Senecal de Fonseca, Redcentric’s chief executive since May 2025, completed the sale of its data center business to DWS-backed Stellanor in April 2026 for a final £124.9m, then returned £90m to shareholders through a tender offer. The agreed enterprise value of up to £127m was about 15.1 times the unit’s adjusted EBITDA. The deal turned the AIM-listed company into a pure managed service provider, a template for MSPs weighing whether to sell capital-heavy infrastructure and keep the services.
Jay Ball
Chief Executive Officer, Flotek Group
Ball co-founded Flotek in 2022 and has made it the UK channel’s fastest-growing business by headcount, according to IT Channel Oxygen’s 2026 Fast-Growth 50. Flotek bought Clear Telecom in July 2026, its 16th acquisition, and took full ownership of FlexiNet in February. Its first consolidated accounts show revenue up 85% to £14.1m and EBITDA of £2.2m in the year to June 2025. Flotek brings founder-led buy-and-build to the small end of the UK managed services market.
Hannah Birch
Chief Executive Officer, Kocho
Birch became Kocho’s chief executive in February 2025 and has since rebuilt the executive team, hired a new CTO and narrowed the business to Microsoft identity and security, a line whose revenue grew 30% in the year to March 2025. In September 2026 Kocho took live a four-year managed ICT contract with Border to Coast, the £120bn local government pension pool. Her public target is revenue above £50m, built on her view that specialist MSPs will pull ahead.
Aaron Brown
Group Chief Executive Officer, Onecom
Brown, who co-founded Onecom in 2013, returned as chief operating officer in June 2025 and became group chief executive in May 2026. Onecom’s 2025 accounts show revenue up 3.4% to £205.2m and management EBITDA up 10.4% to £38.4m. Since his return it has launched the Wave cloud phone platform and the Halo AI platform, and merged its IT arms into the 80-person OnecomMatrix. He leads one of the channel’s biggest moves from telecoms reselling into managed IT.
Barney Taylor
Chief Executive Officer, Air IT Group
Taylor, chief executive of Air IT Group since December 2024, has repositioned the August Equity-backed SME specialist around automation and AI. The business relaunched its brand in October 2025, won Rewst’s Automation and AI Excellence Award in June 2026 for its in-house Neuron platform and launched AI services for SMEs in September. Its 2024 accounts show revenue up 10% to £68.9m, with 79% from recurring contracts. Air IT says it now supports more than 2,000 organizations.
Ross Teague
CEO, Nebula Global Services
Teague founded Nebula Global Services in 2020 to sell field engineering and managed services to MSPs, resellers and vendors, and the company says it now delivers in more than 170 countries. In 2026 he added partnerships with networking vendor Meter and FinOps specialist Netos and hired Scott Lynn from Agilitas as global services director. Nebula says it won a CRN UK Channel Award in both 2024 and 2025. It serves partners that need engineers abroad without building their own teams there.