ScanSource Bets $220.5M On MicroAge To Supercharge Its Channel Convergence Play

‘[MicroAge] came out of the pure VAR world, if you will, back in the day, and developed a really nice services strategy and offering, and so they know what it takes to take a pure hardware reseller company like many of our traditional bar-code VARs and help them move to higher-margin, higher-growth technologies like AI and data centers,’ says ScanSource Chair and CEO Mike Baur.

Technology distributor ScanSource Thursday unveiled the $220.5 million acquisition of MicroAge, a leading solution provider and MSP.

That acquisition gives ScanSource the services business it needs to pursue what it calls its convergence strategy of helping its traditional telecom channel partners take on more IT services while helping its IT channel partners do more with its telecom offerings.

With the deal, which is slated to close before the end of this month, MicroAge, ranked No. 123 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500, will bring ScanSource a team of over 200 people with certifications and partnerships with vendors including Microsoft, Dell Technologies, Sophos, HPE, CrowdStrike and VMware.

“We were looking for a services-rich company [where] we could take their services—managed services, professional services—to offer more services to our channel partners,” said Mike Baur, chair and CEO of Greenville, S.C.-based ScanSource. “We have been looking for about a year now. And MicroAge came into our view, and we’re like, ‘Wow, why not MicroAge?’ They came out of the pure VAR world, if you will, back in the day, and developed a really nice services strategy and offering, and so they know what it takes to take a pure hardware reseller company like many of our traditional bar-code VARs and help them move to higher-margin, higher-growth technologies like AI and data centers.”

ScanSource’s plan is for MicroAge, which Baur described as a profitable organization, to remain an independent profitable and growth business and add resources to help ensure that growth continues.

“And then the end game is how do we take their services and offer them to the rest of our channel partners?” he said.” And that’s part of what I would call the ‘post-closing strategy.’ It’s not really an integration. It’s more how do we take their existing services and in some cases hardware and sell them through our channel of solution providers?”

When asked whether having MicroAge continue offering services to its own end-user customers while helping add services to the business of ScanSource’s existing channel partners might lead to channel conflict, Baur said there is currently very little overlap between existing MicroAge customers and ScanSource partners’ customers.

“[And] what they sell into an end user today is different than what our channel partners sell as a primary strategy,” he said. “So, for example, MicroAge might be calling on an enterprise to sell data center technology where we’ve got a traditional security solution provider selling security cameras. They both can be in the same end user with no channel conflict because our channel historically has been very specialized in what they offer, and so they’re not trying to sell across all these other technologies. And we think, and the research shows, that most end users are dealing with six different partners on a regular basis on the channel.”

ScanSource will be the arbitrator of any potential channel conflict, Baur said.

“For example, if we have an existing channel partner that’s working with an end user and a MicroAge salesperson shows up, we can help decide who really was there first and who is providing value,” he said ... “And remember when we bought [technology advisor] Resourcive a couple years ago? We had the same early questions, and we’ve had only a very small handful of issues where someone said, ‘Hey, I think I’m competing against the company you own,’ and in those cases, we were quickly able to determine we would back out because the market is so big, we don’t need to win those deals.”

MicroAge was previously owned in part by NewSpring Capital, a Radnor, Pa.-based private equity firm. NewSpring earlier this year also sold MSP platform company Manga5 to EA Investors.