Rich Thompson

Richard Thompson has run ANS, the Manchester-based Microsoft partner and cloud services provider, since October 2022. He joined that June as chief revenue officer after 20 years at TalkTalk Business, latterly as managing director of its indirect business, and was named chief executive when Paul Shannon stepped down after nearly six years. Shannon had overseen the sale of ANS to private equity firm Inflexion and its merger with UKFast.

A bet on Microsoft’s AI tiers

Thompson has tied ANS closely to Microsoft. It was named Microsoft’s UK Partner of the Year in November 2025, a year after winning the UK services partner award. In March 2026 it became the first UK partner to earn Microsoft’s Frontier Partner designation, which is meant to mark out partners that can take customers from AI pilots to governed, organization-wide use of Copilot and agents. ANS says qualifying took 111 passed exams, 133 net new deployments and 65 net new customers across the relevant designations, and that it deployed Copilot and agents internally first.

“For customers, the Frontier Partner designation provides assurance that we can support AI adoption safely and at pace, without introducing unmanaged risk,” Thompson said at the time.

Buying data and ERP skills

He has added capability by acquisition, with financial backing from Inflexion and lender Barings. In September 2025 ANS bought Makutu, a Derby-based data engineering and AI consultancy founded in 2020, with 25 staff. A month later it bought Sci-Net, an Oxford-based Microsoft Business Central specialist with 65 staff and 25 years of trading. The two deals added 90 staff. “Our acquisition of Sci-Net is our latest milestone in a strategy that combines strong organic growth with selective M&A activity,” Thompson said.

Growth in cloud and security

In 2024, the latest year filed at Companies House, group turnover rose 2% to £132.8m. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 11% to £30.5m. Public cloud managed services revenue grew 31% and security revenue 28% as customers moved off legacy hosting.

Why it matters to the channel

ANS shows what Microsoft’s new partner tiers ask of the partners that reach them. Rivals chasing Frontier status should note what it took: exams, reference customers and internal deployment before external selling.

Thompson has made ANS Microsoft’s UK Partner of the Year and its first UK Frontier Partner, and has bought the data and ERP skills to deliver on both.