Why Business Services Ecosystems Are A Hotbed of M&A Activity

The recently published IT & Business Services market report from Hampleton Partners has revealed strong M&A momentum in the first half of this year – a surge partly propelled by the acquisitions of business service providers partnered with the likes of Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow. 

Not only has there been a high number of deals targeting such companies, but the median EBITDA multiple for this segment has soared to the highest point on record, indicating unprecedented investor confidence in the growth prospects of service providers aligned with major enterprise software ecosystems.

Several factors have been contributing to this bullish market. First, the overall context of workplace digitalisation. The transition from on-prem to hybrid or cloud-native setups is continuing at a rapid pace around the globe, while enterprise software stacks are becoming larger and more complex thanks to the proliferation of SaaS tools such as ERP and CRM suites. These transformations are driving demand for third-party administrators and developers, as an efficient alternative to recruiting in-house staff with the right certifications and deep expertise required to manage cloud infrastructures or fully leverage solutions like Salesforce’s Agentforce and Atlassian’s Jira.

This strong client demand, coupled with subscription-based delivery models which lock in recurring revenue, make ecosystem-aligned service providers attractive to financial buyers and PE-backed portfolio firms prioritising predictable cashflows and resilience when selecting investment targets (a trend underscored in our report).

At the same time, strategic acquisitions have also been going strong. The highly fragmented nature of this space is providing ample scope for consolidation, with service providers snapping up other companies in the same space to quickly scale technological capabilities, top up certifications, enter new geographical markets, and enhance their platform expertise in specific verticals such as finance, life sciences and autotech. 

Let’s take a quick look at what our report has revealed about activity within five major ecosystems outlined in our report, and some emblematic acquisitions which have recently taken place. (Please note the deal numbers below refer to fully disclosed transactions only.)

In the first half of this year, as in all previous six-month reporting periods, Microsoft-focused business service providers accounted for the largest proportion of ecosystem deals by a large margin. 

The consistent appeal of such firms to buyers is unsurprising, given the sheer ubiquity of both the Microsoft Dynamics suite of business applications – which encompass AI-powered CRM and ERP tools – and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Indeed, around 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure to host and manage their IT infrastructure. 

The UK has been one of Europe’s epicentres of Microsoft-related dealmaking, with one recent significant transaction being the September purchase of solutions partner mhance by SilverTree Equity. Already serving hundreds of clients in the UK and Ireland, Cheadle-based mhance intends to leverage this investment to increase its range of services and capabilities in Azure, Dynamics and other Microsoft ecosystem solutions. 

While some way behind Microsoft, the Salesforce ecosystem saw the second-highest number of deals featured in our 1H25 rundown. Serving more than 150,000 global clients, its CRM platform has rapidly evolved in the age of generative AI, with last year’s launch of the Agentforce platform allowing Salesforce users to craft and deploy autonomous AI agents to handle daily workflows. This has particularly fuelled investor interest in ecosystem firms with expertise in AI integration and automation. 

One such company is Skie, a Melbourne-based Salesforce consultancy which has established a reputation as one of the leading Agentforce implementation specialists in the APAC region. In May, Skie was acquired by British digital transformation company Bluprintx, as part of an aggressive buy-and-build strategy which has seen it recently snap up other ecosystem consultancies around the world.

2025 has been a milestone year for SAP, with the German purveyor of ERP, supply chain and other cloud-based business solutions officially becoming Europe’s most valuable company in March, when it reached a market cap of around USD 342bn. This came amid a major restructuring strategy which has seen the tech giant firmly focus on AI augmentation of its product suite. 

SAP’s increasingly lofty status is incentivising companies to buy their way into its ecosystem. One notable example is another German firm, GFT Technologies, which in July agreed to acquire leading Brazilian SAP consultancy Megawork. The deal marks GFT’s entry into SAP implementation solutions, with the company stating that it aims to leverage its own GenAI product, Wynxx, to “massively improve the efficiency of SAP migrations” in verticals such as life sciences and manufacturing.   

Providing an AI-powered platform for IT service management, IT operations management and other critical processes, ServiceNow counts around 85% of the Fortune 500 as clients. The company’s expansion beyond its core IT services to other workflows such as employee onboarding and CRM, along with its adoption of agentic AI capabilities, will likely bolster demand for ServiceNow consultancies.

In September, digital transformation company Onepoint bought IN-IT, a Dijon-based consultancy which was voted the ServiceNow Partner of the Year (EMEA region) in 2022. The transaction is part of Onepoint’s plan to provide a fully integrated offering based on market-leading tech solutions, with IN-IT’s particular expertise in agentic systems making it an appealing acquisition target. 

The creator of the enterprise collaboration and project management tools Jira, Confluence and Trello, Atlassian boasts around 300,000 clients worldwide. While M&A activity within its ecosystem has declined in recent years, the company recently announced the sunsetting of its on-premises data centre subscriptions, which will likely to boost demand for Atlassian service providers as clients migrate to the Atlassian cloud ahead of the data centre expiry date of March 2029.

Rising demand may well lead to a resurgence in M&A, and we recently saw a significant transaction in the form of catworkx’s purchase of fellow Atlassian solution partner Herzum. The takeover of Herzum, which is headquartered in Illinois but has a sprawling international footprint, is a key strategic step for catworkx, consolidating its position in the Americas and the DACH region, and bringing it into the Italian market for the first time.

If you’re a founder or senior executive in the ecosystem services market and interested to know the exit potential of your company, please reach out to our managing director Konstantin Kastius for an informal chat. You can also download our IT & Business Services M&A report, along with our other recent deep dives into sectors from Autotech to Digital Commerce, and subscribe to ensure you never miss out on the latest research and insights from the expert analysts at Hampleton Partners.