Between 2015 and 2025 we recorded 12,843 announced acquisitions of IT services companies worldwide. Annual volume climbed from 861 deals in 2015 to a peak of 1,485 in 2022, then settled between 1,200 and 1,340 a year through 2025. This article ranks the most active strategic buyers of IT services businesses across all eleven years, using proprietary counts from the Aventis Advisors deal database of more than 125,000 transactions. Most published rankings cover a single year and treat “IT services” as one market. Eleven years of data tell a more useful story.
IT services is not one market, and the buyers prove it. A firm rolling up managed service providers in the US mid-market has almost nothing in common with a global systems integrator buying cloud and cybersecurity capability, yet a single league table lumps them together. This is the hub for our IT services buyer research: it ranks the most active acquirers overall, then points you to a dedicated deep-dive for each of the service lines, where the buyers change completely from one line to the next, with one exception.
That exception is Accenture, which tops five of the six main service lines and sits first overall with 145 IT services acquisitions in the period. Below it, the field fragments into specialists: permanent-hold MSP consolidators, European systems-integration roll-ups, pure-play cybersecurity acquirers, and cloud-native buyers built almost entirely through M&A. For a founder weighing a sale, the buyer that matters is the one active in your specific service line, not the one at the top of a blended list.
Who buys IT services companies: 2015-2025 in numbers
Deal activity rose through the decade with a clear pandemic-era peak. Volume averaged about 1,010 IT services acquisitions a year in 2015-2019, jumped to roughly 1,325 a year in 2020-2022 as cheap capital and accelerated digitization pulled buyers in, then cooled to around 1,275 a year in 2023-2025 without collapsing. The single best year was 2022 at 1,485 deals; 2023 was the trough of the correction at 1,207, before a partial recovery.
Price transparency is poor, as it is across private M&A. A purchase price was disclosed in only 23.5% of the 12,843 deals, and the median disclosed value was $18.0 million. The typical IT services acquisition is a small, undisclosed transaction, which is exactly where the roll-up buyers do most of their work. We track how these businesses are valued separately in our IT services valuations multiples article.
Methodology
The ranking covers announced acquisitions of IT services companies between January 2015 and December 2025, drawn from the Aventis Advisors deal database. Deals are classified into service-line subcategories, a tag present on 99.6% of IT services deals. Corporate families are grouped under one parent, so Sesa and its subsidiary VAR Group count as one buyer. A buyer’s category is set by where the majority of its deals sit: our sibling ranking of software company buyers excludes Accenture because most of its acquisitions are IT services rather than software, and this ranking applies the same rule in reverse. Software product vendors that occasionally buy a services firm, such as Visma or TeamSystem, are excluded even where the target is a services business. Financial buyers acquiring directly are excluded, and so are private equity funds, which we cover separately in our companion ranking of the top PE investors in IT services; PE-backed operating platforms running buy-and-build are treated as strategic buyers. Deal reporting is incomplete and values are disclosed for a minority of transactions, so the list may not capture every deal a buyer completed.
The most active strategic acquirers of IT services
The table below ranks the most active strategic buyers of IT services companies by number of acquisitions from 2015 to 2025, across all service lines, with corporate families consolidated. Private equity funds are excluded here because they are covered in the companion PE investors ranking.
| # | Buyer | IT services acquisitions 2015-2025 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Accenture |
145 |
| 2 |  Sesa (incl. VAR Group) |
39 |
| 3 |  Evergreen Services Group |
38 |
| 4 |  Cognizant |
32 |
| 5 |  Bechtle |
28 |
| 6 |  IBM |
26 |
| 7 |  Twenty (20 LLC) |
25 |
| 8 |  Capgemini |
25 |
| 9 |  Thrive |
24 |
| 10 |  Globant |
23 |
| 11 |  Devoteam |
23 |
| 12 |  Advania |
22 |
| 13 |  Alten |
21 |
| 14 |  DXC Technology |
21 |
| 15 |  Atos |
21 |
Just outside the top 15, Park Place Technologies, Converge, Conscia, Claranet and Tech Mahindra each recorded roughly 19 to 20 IT services acquisitions and narrowly missed the cut.
Accenture: the one buyer in every category
Overview: Accenture is the most active acquirer of IT services companies in the world, with 145 acquisitions across the eleven years and a top-two position in every major service line except managed services. It uses M&A as a continuous capability-refresh engine, buying small and mid-sized specialists and folding them into its global delivery network rather than running them as standalone brands. No other buyer in this article spans the full range of IT services the way Accenture does.
Acquisition pace: Roughly 12 to 15 IT services deals a year, sustained across the cycle, with a tilt toward systems integration and consulting early in the period and a shift toward cybersecurity and cloud capability more recently.
Typical target: A specialist consultancy, integrator, or security or cloud practice of 50 to 500 people, usually acquired to add a skill, a platform certification, or a geographic foothold. Prices are disclosed on only a handful of deals and cluster in the tens to low hundreds of millions.
Select transactions: CyberCX (Australia, cybersecurity, ~$652m, 2025), Cloud Sherpas (US, cloud, ~$407m, 2015), Camelot Management Consultants (Germany, systems integration, ~$152m, 2024), and Context Information Security (UK, cybersecurity, ~$139m, 2020).
The six service lines, and who leads each
Who leads changes completely from one service line to the next. Each line has its own deep-dive with the full buyer ranking, deal-count tables, and acquirer profiles; the summaries below name the standouts and link out.
Software development and digital engineering is the largest line by deal volume. Accenture leads, ahead of digitally-native engineering firms scaling nearshore and offshore talent such as Globant, Endava and EPAM. See who is buying software development firms.
Systems integration is where the global consultancies and large European IT groups compete, and it holds some of the biggest IT services deals of the decade. Accenture leads, followed by European consolidators like Bechtle and Sesa (incl. VAR Group). See who is buying systems integrators.
Managed services (MSP) is the one line Accenture does not top. It is dominated by permanent-hold, mostly private equity-backed consolidators buying small SMB-focused providers at high volume, led by Evergreen Services Group, Twenty (20 LLC) and Thrive. See who is buying MSPs.
IT consulting is Accenture’s most active line by count, ahead of European roll-ups and established majors such as Emagine and CGI. See who is buying IT consulting firms.
Cybersecurity services is the most fragmented and most heavily consolidated line, with pure-play security acquirers and regional MSSP roll-ups competing alongside the majors. Accenture leads, followed by platforms such as Swiss IT Security and CISO Global. See who is buying cybersecurity services firms.
Cloud professional services buyers acquire hyperscaler-certified migration and managed-cloud specialists. Accenture leads, ahead of cloud-native platforms and majors such as Claranet and IBM. See who is buying cloud services providers.
Beyond the six main lines, we cover four smaller ones in their own deep-dives: value-added resellers, data and analytics, digital engineering, and software testing. Private equity acquirers across all of IT services are ranked separately in our companion top PE investors in IT services.
What this means for founders
Three patterns matter if you own an IT services business and might sell in the next one to three years.
First, the right buyer is defined by your service line, not by the overall league table. An MSP owner should be talking to permanent-hold consolidators like Evergreen or Twenty, not to a systems integrator; a cybersecurity founder faces an entirely different and unusually crowded field of acquirers. Knowing which list you are on tells you who to expect at the table and how they buy.
Second, buyer type sets the terms as much as the price. The MSP and cyber roll-ups buy small, buy often, and typically retain management, while the global consultancies and large European groups buy for a specific capability and integrate it. One path preserves your brand and team; the other absorbs them. Neither is better in the abstract, but they imply very different deals. Our note on strategic versus financial buyers unpacks the distinction.
Third, disclosed values flatter reality. Prices are reported mostly on the largest deals, so headline averages sit well above what a typical founder-scale business commands. Use them to understand which buyers write large checks, not to value your own company.
Who will buy my IT services business?
The honest answer is that it depends on what you do. If you run a managed service provider, your most likely acquirers are the permanent-capital roll-ups consolidating the SMB market. If you run a cybersecurity, cloud, or consulting practice with genuine specialist capability, you are more likely to attract a global consultancy or a large European group buying to fill a gap, which usually means a higher multiple but full integration. Systems integrators sit between the two, with both national roll-ups and global buyers in play. The service-line deep-dives linked above map each of these fields in detail.
A sale process run well puts several of these buyers in competition rather than negotiating with one. That is the single biggest lever on outcome, and it is where an advisor earns their fee.
Considering a sale of your IT services business?
Aventis Advisors advises technology and IT services founders on M&A. We help you understand who the realistic buyers are, position the business for the right ones, and run a competitive process. Talk to our team.
About Aventis Advisors
Aventis Advisors is an M&A advisory firm focused on technology and IT services companies. We advise founders and owners on company sales, growth capital, and strategic transactions, combining sector focus with proprietary deal data such as the database behind this article. To discuss your options, get in touch.
