Beech Tree Private Equity today announces a significant investment in Transparity Solutions, a fast-growing Microsoft cloud specialist.

The Business is a pureplay Microsoft Public Cloud Partner, meaning all products and services provided are from the Microsoft stack, this specialisation allows them to offer the highest possible levels of service around their solutions when supporting their large corporate and enterprise clients. Beech Tree Private Equity has been looking to invest further in the sector due to the rapid growth in demand for the provision of cloud managed services across this area of the market and will support Transparity with its plans to scale up rapidly in this highly fragmented market. According to industry forecasts, the CAGR across public cloud is expected to be greater than 20% over the next five years and Azure (Microsoft's cloud) looks set to continue to capture further market share.

Transparity Solutions, headquartered near Bournemouth, provides a full range of Microsoft cloud solutions to support UK large corporates and enterprises. Transparity provides advice, implementation services and training with regard to digital transformation projects and migration to Microsoft 365 and Azure services. The business also provides ongoing support and maintenance to customers around these business critical services including Modern Workplace (Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams etc) and Azure (data and support infrastructure). Transparity has a market leading offering with a strong focus on technical knowledge and customer services. The Business has plans to continue to invest and expand its service offering to include additional value-added managed services, security and voice solutions.

Transparity currently employs 60 people and has delivered year on year growth of c.60% since inception almost six years ago. The business is on track to deliver £13m revenue in the current financial year (up from £7.9m) and plans to grow to £21m next year.

The company has appointed a new CFO as part of the deal, Iain Slater, whose prior sector knowledge and acquisition experience will help to support the current management team in executing its buy-and-build strategy. Adam Rudd and Simon Hemley from Beech Tree Private Equity have also joined the board as Non-Executive Directors.

Commenting on the investment in Transparity, Adam Rudd, Director at Beech Tree Private Equity said "we have been seeking to invest in a Microsoft specialist cloud service provider targeting the large corporate and enterprise market for some time. The market is growing extremely quickly, and the business has referenced very strongly with a happy customer base and a strong relationship with Microsoft. We are excited to support the management team in pursuing a buy and build strategy – this is an area in which we have a lot of experience, having helped many of our other invested businesses to pursue similar strategies. We are delighted to invest in Transparity."

David Jobbins, CEO of Transparity comments on the investment "we have built a strong relationship with the Beech Tree team over the past eighteen months or so and their experience, connections and knowledge of the sector will help us scale to the next level. Importantly, this investment will enable us to continue to improve and expand our high-quality offering to our customer base. With Beech Tree's assistance we will now accelerate our organic growth through further expansion of our cloud services proposition. With Beech Tree supporting us, we are now looking forward to embarking on our acquisition strategy in order to accelerate our growth even further".

Funders of the transaction:Beech Tree Private Equity (Adam Rudd, Simon Hemley, Luke Burns)

Advisers to the transaction:Advisers to Beech Tree and Newco:Financial Due Diligence – Dow Schofield Watts (Ed Brentnall, Rob Parker, Rebecca Smith)Legal – DLA Piper (James Kerrigan, Christopher Wilson, Helen Tsang)Tax – PwC (Nick Elliott, Catherine Kay, Callum Lee)Customer diligence – The Customer Consultancy (Charlie Bantoft)Management due diligence – i2i HQ Ltd (Michael Finnigan)Insurance Due Diligence – Bollington Insurance (Ian Muldowney)Advisers to the Company:Legal – Moore Barlow (Peter Jeffrey)