The growth of open source software in Europe has produced a plethora of small and medium open source support and services businesses, often operating within geographic boundaries or focusing on specific products.
Bristol, UK-based LinuxIT expanded its operations into mainland Europe in July based on increasing demand for its consulting, support, and training services from multinational companies. The company’s CEO, Peter Dawes-Huish, told Computer Business Review he sees consolidation as inevitable.
We’ve been approached twice this year by organizations looking for potential acquisitions, he said, adding that the company is looking to make purchases of its own. I would see that as an inevitable part of our strategy – we’ll see some acquisition activity, he added.
Mr Dawes-Huish said that both share swap and cash deals are available to LinuxIT but added that identifying suitable targets was another matter. We are constantly going through the process of evaluating potential acquisitions, he said. We have identified potential targets.
The immaturity of the market means that some potential targets are not all they might market themselves as, however. The Linux world in general has some very talented people in it, but it also has a genre of people whose expectations are greater than their ability. What we are good at is sifting the wheat from the chaff. Surprisingly, that has proved to be a more difficult task than we thought, he added.
LinuxIT’s experience so far in supplying support to European and multinational customers has indicated that there are some differences in the approach to Linux in the UK and mainland Europe, with UK businesses taking a less proactive role in the adoption of Linux.
On continental Europe the majority of customers, including large corporates, tailor their installations and are very well-informed, whereas, I still think there has been a much broader embrace of Linux as an operating system, but in the UK there tends to be a lower level of knowledge about what Linux can do for them, he said.
The company provides its Linux expertise direct to customers as well as via partners including Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, and claims to be the UK’s leading Linux system integrator and professional services firm.
