Sam Mudd

Sam Mudd has been chief executive of Bytes Technology Group, the FTSE 250 software and cloud reseller, since May 2024, after three months as interim chief executive. She joined Phoenix Software, the group’s public-sector business, in November 2003 and was its managing director for a decade before taking the top job. Much of her tenure has gone on adapting the group to Microsoft’s shift of partner incentives toward consumption-based and service-led funding.

Growth through a change in vendor funding

In the year to 28 February 2026, Bytes’ gross invoiced income rose 11.5% to £2.34bn, with software up 11.4% and services up 24.6%. Gross profit rose 2.5% to £167.3m, with growth of 4.6% in the second half once the first year of Microsoft’s incentive changes had passed. Public-sector gross profit rose 7.4%.

Mudd called it “a year of adaptation and evolution against a more challenging market backdrop.”

Two brands, two markets

For the current financial year she has drawn a cleaner line through the group. Bytes Software Services now sells only to the private sector and Phoenix only to the public sector, with each taking over the other’s minority of accounts. The company describes it as “a smaller but strategic change”: in FY26 the private sector already made up 87% of Bytes’ gross profit and the public sector 98% of Phoenix’s. The stated aim is to end internal competition and make the group simpler for vendors, which typically run separate public and private-sector sales teams.

In a September 2026 trading update, Bytes estimated that gross invoiced income rose about 19% and gross profit about 18% in the six months to 31 August, with operating profit up about 6%, and it raised its full-year gross profit guidance to growth in the low to mid-teens. Mudd said AI “is becoming a more meaningful driver of growth in our core business areas.”

Why it matters to the channel

Bytes is the purest listed read on the UK Microsoft licensing channel, and its results show a partner adapting to Microsoft’s new incentive model by leaning harder on services and vendor-funded delivery work. The public-private split is also a template other resellers selling into both markets may copy.

Mudd has kept Bytes growing through a change in how Microsoft pays its partners, and has reorganized it into two focused businesses, one for each market.