Terry O’Brien

Terry O’Brien is chief executive of Giacom, a channel-only marketplace that supplies cloud, Microsoft, mobile, connectivity, security and hardware to UK resellers and managed service providers. He ran the business when it was Digital Wholesale Solutions (DWS) and led it out of Daisy Group in a demerger backed by a minority investment from Inflexion, which valued it at £1bn. He has stayed in charge through the rebrand to Giacom and a run of acquisitions, including Microsoft specialist intY’s UK business in December 2023 and Inform Billing in November 2024.

One marketplace for every service

O’Brien’s argument, set out when Giacom bought Inform Billing, is that small businesses want one strategic technology partner, so resellers have “a tremendous opportunity to accelerate their growth by becoming a one stop shop”. Giacom wants to be where those one-stop shops buy. Giacom says it now supports more than 6,000 technology resellers and MSPs through its Cloud Market platform.

The past year has filled in the gaps. In April 2026 Giacom added EE through a deal with BT Wholesale, giving partners all three major UK mobile networks for the first time. In July it replaced its separate Vodafone, EE and O2 propositions with a single framework, Velocity, and added Huntress’s managed detection and response services to its security range. In August it hired Darren Spence, formerly group managing director of Northamber, as managing director of its cloud business, alongside the existing managing director for mobile.

Announcing the appointment, O’Brien said: “Cloud and Microsoft services are at the heart of how SMBs operate, while cybersecurity, AI and modern workplace technology are becoming increasingly important parts of the same conversation.” Giacom describes itself as the UK’s largest indirect Microsoft provider serving small and medium-sized businesses.

The software behind the supply

Giacom’s less visible business is software. It says its Cloud Market Tools billing suite now supports more than 1,000 UK reseller partners and processes almost £3bn of annual retail billing, after £6m of platform investment over the past year. That billing and provisioning layer is what ties partners to Giacom beyond price. It won Best Billing Provider and Best Wholesale Service Provider at the Channel National Awards on 24 September 2026. Giacom told IT Channel Oxygen in 2024 that its revenue run rate was £500m.

Why it matters to the channel

For small MSPs, Giacom is often where Microsoft licenses, mobile contracts, broadband and security tools are bought together and billed through the same system. O’Brien’s bet is that this bundle becomes the default way the UK’s smaller providers go to market, in competition with marketplaces such as Pax8 and ALSO Cloud.

O’Brien now has the pieces in place: three mobile networks, a named cloud leader and a billing platform that more than 1,000 partners run their businesses on.