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Advania, one of the largest IT consultancies in northern Europe, is buying a rival called CCS Media to grow its UK presence.

The companies didn’t share the deal’s financial terms. But they did reveal that the combined organization will have annual revenues of 1.4 billion pounds and more than 5,000 employees. Over a third of those staffers, or 1,500 people, will be based in the UK.

Stockholm-based Advania is a portfolio company of Goldman Sachs. Besides Sweden, it maintains offices in Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and the UK. One of the company’s main specialties is helping organizations run in-house data centers. It also provides other consulting services including outsourced application development and cybersecurity assistance.

According to its website, much of the work that Advania does for clients involves Microsoft products. In the Microsoft partner ecosystem, consultancies can win six so-called cloud designations that each demonstrate expertise in a different set of technical areas. Advania has received all six cloud designations along with numerous other certifications from the Windows developer.

CCS Media, the UK firm that the company is buying, maintains offices in Chessington and Warrington. It’s active in many of same areas as Advania. CCS Media runs companies’ IT infrastructure on their behalf to save time for their internal technologists. The consultancy can also optimize a client’s technology procurement workflows, for example by finding opportunities to cut costs.

In a press release, Advania detailed two of the motivations that led it to buy CCS Media. The first is that the deal will enable it to compete more effectively for contracts from UK-based midmarket companies, or businesses with up to a few thousand employees. Midmarket companies already account for much of Advania’s existing clients. Second, the deal will create opportunities for the firm to sell its Microsoft consulting services to CCS Media’s customers.

“The extensive capability of the combined business, and particularly Advania UK’s class leading partnership with Microsoft, will enable us to address a broader range of customer needs from devices & infrastructure, to strategy, cloud transformation, AI, and managed services,” said CCS Media CEO Terry Betts. 

Advania plans to complete the deal by the end of the year.

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