The company says it has expanded from roughly £28 million in turnover to more than £50 million over five years, and from just over 160 staff to nearly 300. Blakemore told CRN that growth was split roughly evenly between organic expansion and acquisitions. The Centrality deal, completed in April 2024, was the pivotal purchase because it brought established Microsoft workplace, Azure transformation and security capabilities into a company whose roots are in telecommunications and connectivity.
Intercity’s own acquisition announcement confirms Centrality is now being folded into the Intercity brand, with Centrality chief executive David Keeling leading the cloud and security division. The company has also said that Centrality’s Microsoft expertise and security operations centre were the reason it pursued the deal. That makes this less a story of a telecoms reseller adding another vendor badge and more an attempt to convert Microsoft services into a core managed-services revenue engine.
Centrality solved a capability problem, not a branding problem
Blakemore’s explanation to CRN is unusually direct: Intercity had begun developing Microsoft capability internally but could not hire specialists fast enough to meet demand. Buying Centrality brought a team of roughly 95 people and a portfolio covering modern workplace, cloud, Azure transformation and security.
That distinction is important for prospective customers. A Microsoft partner can sell Microsoft 365, Azure subscriptions, or security products without necessarily having the staffing depth to design, migrate, secure and operate an environment after the sale. Intercity’s purchase was intended to obtain delivery capacity, Microsoft accreditations and an existing security operation, not simply licence resale rights.
The post-acquisition integration has also had time to move beyond the announcement phase. Intercity says Centrality has been rebranded and its expertise integrated into the group, while Birmingham Business reported that Keeling joined Intercity’s board to run the cloud and security division. A 2026 case study published by Microsoft-partnership consultancy Noteworthy adds useful texture: it says Intercity sought help consolidating Partner Center operations, validating claims and accreditations, and bringing Microsoft incentive and funding processes under a common governance model.
Those back-office details are easy to overlook, but they are where acquisition promises are either made real or lost. A combined provider cannot give customers a clean “single partner” experience if its licensing, incentives, technical ownership and escalation paths remain split between acquired businesses. Intercity’s reported investment in that integration is evidence that Centrality is being treated as a platform for the group rather than a stand-alone unit left to operate under a new logo.
The £100 million goal makes M&A unavoidable
Intercity’s 6% to 8% annual growth target sounds conservative compared with the company’s previous rapid expansion. It is also difficult to reconcile with the £100 million revenue ambition for 2030 that Intercity has repeated in recent coverage by Bdaily, Technology Reseller and Birmingham Business—unless more acquisitions occur.
Start with Blakemore’s current £52 million figure cited by CRN. Four years of compound growth at 6% produces about £66 million; at 8%, it produces roughly £71 million. Even using the £55 million revenue figure Intercity gave Technology Reseller in late 2025 only reaches around £75 million at 8% annually by 2030. Reaching £100 million from £52 million in four years requires growth of approximately 17.6% every year.
That does not mean either target is false. It means they describe different parts of the strategy. The lower figure appears to be the expected underlying growth rate in a tougher UK market. The £100 million goal depends on a combination of stronger-than-planned organic performance, a material acceleration late in the period, or—most plausibly given Intercity’s own history—further acquisitions.
Blakemore has already described the formula to CRN: build organically for two or three years, then buy a complementary or strategic asset to get to the next scale point. Centrality was the proof of that model. Any customer considering a multi-year outsourcing agreement should therefore assess Intercity as an MSP likely to keep changing through acquisition, rather than as a settled £50 million provider.
That can be beneficial. Larger scale may mean more specialist coverage, 24-hour operational capability and access to a broader range of services without coordinating separate network, workplace, cloud and security providers. It can also introduce familiar acquisition risks: account-team changes, tool consolidation, revised service catalogues and altered escalation routes. The relevant due-diligence question is whether Intercity can demonstrate that Centrality customers retained their expertise and service continuity through the integration—not simply whether the two companies’ capabilities look complementary on a slide.
Dynamics 365 is part of the integration work
The company is investing in the internal systems required to operate as a broader MSP. Blakemore told CRN that Intercity has spent £1 million on a new Dynamics 365-based core business system. Earlier reporting in Technology Reseller described that as part of a wider £1.8 million investment combining Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Halo ITSM.
The two figures are not necessarily contradictory. The £1 million appears to refer to the Microsoft-powered business-system component, while £1.8 million describes the full investment programme, which also included site upgrades, training and cyber-awareness initiatives. But the distinction is worth making because vendors often present the largest total investment number without explaining how much has gone into tools directly affecting customer delivery.
For IT administrators, a Dynamics 365 and Halo ITSM combination is meaningful only if it changes the operational experience: cleaner asset and contract data, reliable service reporting, transparent approvals, better billing controls, faster handoffs between teams, and a consistent record when a customer uses several Intercity services. A new platform does not guarantee any of those outcomes. It does, however, signal that Intercity recognises the operational strain created by growth and integration.
The company’s July appointment of James Pearse as chief technology officer reinforces that priority. Bdaily reported Pearse will lead Intercity’s technology strategy, CTO office and innovation governance, with a remit spanning Microsoft, AI, security and managed services. His arrival follows the platform investment and gives Intercity a named executive responsible for turning a collection of service lines into a more coherent technology proposition.
Microsoft is central, but it is not the whole business
Blakemore told CRN that Intercity is “looking to grow on all fronts,” rather than concentrating only on Microsoft. That is credible given the company’s continuing managed LAN, SD-WAN, connectivity, communications and managed IT operations. It also reveals the commercial logic of the Centrality purchase: Microsoft fills a gap in a larger account strategy built around becoming the primary technology supplier.
A customer with Microsoft 365, Azure, endpoint management, identity security, WAN connectivity, mobile services and voice platforms often has a fragmented support model. Intercity is positioning itself to take responsibility for more of those layers. The immediate benefit is a potentially simpler commercial and operational relationship; the trade-off is greater concentration with a single provider.
Its security proposition is where that consolidation needs the most scrutiny. Intercity says it operates the Microsoft-oriented security operations centre in Bedford alongside an established network operations centre, and that Centrality strengthened its credentials through membership of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association. Membership and product alignment are useful signals, but they are not substitutes for customer-specific answers on monitoring scope, log retention, incident response responsibilities, threat-hunting coverage, out-of-hours escalation and who owns remediation when a breach crosses Microsoft, network and endpoint domains.
Intercity’s early US presence should be read in the same light. Blakemore told CRN that the company incorporated a US entity about two years ago and has only a small team there, primarily supporting UK customers with US operations and US organisations with UK requirements. The company has not announced a major American expansion, and Blakemore said the UK remains the focus for the next two to three years. For now, that is a support foothold rather than evidence of a transatlantic operating model.
The practical consequence is straightforward: Intercity is moving from an acquisitive regional communications provider toward a consolidated Microsoft, cloud, security and connectivity MSP, but it is still in the middle of proving that model at scale. Its published 6% to 8% growth outlook is measured; its £100 million 2030 ambition is not achievable on that organic rate alone. Customers should expect the next phase to include more integration work—and, if the larger target remains firm, another strategically chosen deal.