Mac Centre spins out Rhubarb IT into its own Apple-led MSP

Sydney-based Mac Centre has spun out its Apple-first IT managed services arm, Rhubarb IT, to be headed by Mac Centre’s current chief executive and director Danny Moore.

Moore told techpartner.news that the new brand and company will allow for better differentiation, helping the managed services offerings stand out from the hardware and software provision that Mac Centre is known for.

“The core of that business, over a long period of time, has been our IT services … it’s a very big part of what we do," he said.

"It was time to give it its own identity, its own focus, and unlock some of the opportunity that we were getting overlooked because it was buried within a business that was looked at as a hardware, software business.

“We wanted to give it the best opportunity for success by opening up those two different markets, talking to them differently, presenting to them differently, so that's why we did it. It gives both businesses now the best opportunity to really establish themselves in the markets they operate.”

Moore - who invested in Mac Centre in 2014 and became more involved in the running of the company over the last three years, taking up the chief executive role in 2023 - said that the Apple-focused managed services approach was still niche and thus Rhubarb was primed to do well in the market.

“It’s giving the market a player that's uniquely different in a space that's not well represented - MSPs that are leading with Apple," he explained.

"There’s 120, 130-odd MSPs in New South Wales alone, and not very many of them lead with the Apple space."

Mac Centre supplies Apple products to some of Australia’s biggest companies including Atlassian and Canva, but Rhubarb will be more focused on smaller companies that are Apple-led.

Moore said that while some of the managed services could fit the enterprise segment, they will primarily be looking at small to medium businesses (SMBs), with a focus on outsourced IT and endpoint management.

“It's a very different audience; if you've got Apple as your primary workplace tech, you're generally going to be in the creative or innovative space - you're a startup or a scale up," he explained.

"There are very different languages that we talk, very different approaches, very different demographics.

He added that Rhubarb would work with companies that had other tech as well as Apple - what he called “hybrid environments” - but that Apple-led workplaces would be the new MSP's main focus.

“They're the clients we’re talking to and making sure that we're covering every aspect of management all the way from the client experience, through to security and compliance, and device management and everything in between,” he said.

Moore said that the last two financial years have seen growth for Mac Centre, with the company already off to a "strong start" in FY26 with an increase in both hardware and services, although more pronounced in the former.

Moore said that while there was some cautiousness in the current environment which meant many companies were extending their refresh cycles, that wasn’t true for all businesses.

“The cautiousness is offset by fast growing innovative companies that are still growing at a rapid rate," he said.

"That helps augment those numbers and that's naturally where Apple fits – in that high growth innovative space. Although it's a small market share overall, it tends to be very active and very fast growing."

Moore said Rhubarb is launching with “unique” offerings, such as a Mac hardware and IT services bundle for a per user, per month fee, which he described as “an industry first”.

He's hoping that the company will be able to gain some traction in the coming year as awareness about the brand grows, but for the near future, the strategy is just to get the word out.

“We've been an MSP for so long, but now we're putting it up in lights and letting the world know who we are and how we do it,” he said.