Nicola Saner

Chorus has turned from a Bristol Microsoft MSP into a security operations center that other partners resell, and its chief executive says channel security revenue doubled in a year

channel managed security revenue in a year, per Saner: 2x
staff, per Chorus: 100+
running Chorus since, first as managing director: Oct 2020

Nicola Saner has run Chorus, a Bristol-based Microsoft specialist founded in 1999, since October 2020, when she was promoted from operations director to managing director. By April 2026 the company was describing her as chief executive. She came to the industry from outside it. “I didn’t begin my career in technology,” she said in a 2021 interview published by Chorus.

From MSP to wholesale security

Under Saner, Chorus has moved from selling IT services direct to selling round-the-clock security through other partners. Its security operations center delivers managed detection and response (MDR) and managed extended detection and response (MXDR) built on Microsoft’s security stack, including Sentinel, and the company has signed a run of distributors to take that service to MSPs: Infinigate Cloud in Europe in June 2024, Dicker Data in Australia in April 2025, ALSO Group across EMEA in June 2025 and Logicom, which operates in more than 30 countries, in April 2026. Chorus says it now has more than 100 staff.

Asked by IT Channel Oxygen in July 2026 for her business high point of the past year, Saner named “doubling our channel managed security services revenue in a single year”.

Pace against prudence

Saner is candid that the harder problem now is AI. Asked by the same outlet for her biggest challenge, she named “pace versus prudence with AI” – moving fast enough to lead without creating new risks. She said Chorus used AI to build a customer-facing portal in days, and that her priority is to embed AI across the business so it becomes a differentiator for customers.

Why it matters to the channel

Many smaller UK MSPs cannot justify staffing a 24/7 security operations center of their own. Chorus offers a Microsoft-native one wholesale, through distributors, to partners who sell it on to their own customers. That makes it a supplier to MSPs it might otherwise compete with, a model that depends on trust as much as on detection times. Chorus is also shortlisted in CRN’s 2026 Women & Diversity in Channel Awards for best place to work and for health and wellbeing.

Saner has turned Chorus into a wholesale security supplier to the channel and, by her account, doubled that business in a single year.

Nicola Saner’s leader profile →The full 2026 list →

Sources