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2025: A year of change and growth for us

Su Kent
Su KentGlobal Content Marketing & Analyst Relations Lead
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As the year closes out, we reflect and review major milestones from the past year related to our combined company’s significant achievements with partners, channel collaboration and direct customer engagements. 

A transformative and strategic transaction 

Big news for the combination of the two companies started unfolding in June when SoftwareOne announced it would conclude its voluntary offer to acquire Crayon and confirmed the executive leadership team for the combined company.  

On July 2, SoftwareOne completed the acquisition of Crayon and assumed 100 percent ownership. The very next day, SoftwareOne shares began trading on the Euronext Oslo Børs – a secondary listing complementing our existing primary listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Becoming a dual-listed company keeps us anchored us in our Swiss and Nordic origins as we define a new future as a combined organisation.   

With around 13,000 professionals across 70 countries, the company’s competitive positioning, service footprint, and geographic scale are augmented and future proofed.  

Thanks to the two companies’ combination, customers now benefit from a broader global reach paired with deep local expertise, buttressed by a more comprehensive service portfolio across cloud, data, software and AI. Partners likewise experience a stronger ecosystem, with deeper vendor relationships, enhanced service delivery and more unified go-to-market momentum. 

Together, we combine unparalleled global reach with strong local presence to deliver outstanding value for customers. Our shared focus on customer success and innovation creates new growth opportunities as the industry continues to evolve in the era of AI.
Raphael Erb

Raphael Erb

Co-CEO, SoftwareOne

Leadership in cloud, data, and AI services 

We continue to innovate in-house and through our external partnerships, offering best-in-class cloud and AI platforms, we expanded our AWS and Azure capabilities and Crayon’s next-generation Cloud-iQ platform (launched in September) helps organisations buy, manage and optimise cloud services from leading providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and Adobe. 

In February, Crayon achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Operations Competency, which is a clear indicator of our ability to help customers operate and optimise cloud environments at scale.  

In June, we announced that Crayon earned the AWS Data and Analytics Consulting Competency, thus strengthening our data and analytics capability for customers. A month later, SoftwareOne achieved the AWS Generative AI Services Competency, reinforcing our expertise in helping clients build secure, scalable, and responsible generative AI solutions.  

August saw Crayon earn its third AWS Service Delivery Programme designation for Amazon ECS – supporting customers with containerised application workloads. 

Our partnership with AWS was further strengthened in October 2025 when we announced a new Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services in late October. This multi-year agreement focuses on accelerating digital transformation and generative AI innovation across the APAC region.  

Winning together: Partner of the Year awards from Microsoft and AWS 

Together, SoftwareOne and Crayon secured a total of eight Microsoft Partner of the Year awards in November 2025. This includes country-level wins in Bulgaria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, and Colombia, plus a global Category Award for Secure Productivity and a Finalist placement for Scale Solutions. Each award represents a real customer success story – from aerospace security in Bulgaria to cloud transformations in Colombia – and Microsoft’s recognition of those projects as exceptional. 

It is an honor to be named the Secure Productivity 2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year because it reflects our commitment to helping customers work smarter and safer. We are grateful to Microsoft for recognising our success in enabling secure collaboration and AI readiness so businesses never have to choose between innovation and protection. We also want to thank our employees for all their hard work and our customers and partners for trusting us to help them achieve their goals and accelerate their success.
Melissa Mulholland

Melissa Mulholland

Co-CEO, SoftwareOne

In December both companies again announced they had received partner of the year awards, this time at the Geo and Global AWS Partner Awards. We were named winners in two categories and finalists in five. 

SoftwareOne won for Public Sector Global Consulting Partner of the Year – LATAM and was named finalist for SaaS Consulting Partner of the Year, Public Sector Gen AI Global Consulting Partner of the Year, Public Sector Global Consulting Partner of the Year – APJ and Public Sector Global Consulting Partner of the Year – EMEA. Crayon was awarded Distributor Partner of the Year – Public Sector – APJ and was named a finalist in Distributor Partner of the Year – APJ. 

FinOps and SAM Managed Services recognition 

February marked Crayon's achievement of Certified FinOps Service Provider status – demonstrating our commitment to responsible cloud financial management.  A few months later, in May, Crayon became the only global services company to have all three certifications (service provider, trainer provider, and certified platform) from the FinOps Foundation. These certifications demonstrate our commitment to responsible cloud financial management.   

On October 1, 2025, three companies in the SoftwareOne Group were conferred Leader status in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadranti for SAM Managed Services: SoftwareOne, Crayon and Anglepoint. In December 2025, IDC MarketScape named SoftwareOne as a Leader in Software Asset Management Managed Services, further reinforcing our standing and credibility in software asset management (SAM) services.  

To us, being recognised as a Leader again reflects our commitment to helping clients optimise their software investments and drive measurable business outcomes, which has been the backbone of our business model since the beginning. Both companies have set new standards in globally scalable, locally relevant SAM aligned to business impact.  

Other leading analysts also acknowledge our credentials. 

Public sector excellence 

In January 2025, SoftwareOne renewed and expanded its role in the GÉANT OCRE 2024 framework becoming a key multi-cloud and AI solution provider for over 25,000 research and public sector organisations across 35 European countries. This six-year agreement (2025–2030) streamlines how universities, research institutes, hospitals, and government agencies can tap into SoftwareOne’s cloud and AI services via a pre-approved procurement route.  

SoftwareOne joining forces with Crayon will be instrumental in servicing public institutions and delivering the promise of OCRE. Together, we will help accelerate digital transformation in academia and government, furthering our mission to drive positive technological impact at a societal level. 

Corporate management systems & sustainability

This year, Crayon earned six new ISO certifications across multiple disciplines, including ISO 42001 focused on the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Collectively, the certifications underline our firm commitment to operational excellence, risk management, compliance, and emerging-tech governance. 

It was announced in September that Crayon’s climate targets were successfully validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an important milestone in the company’s sustainability journey and our commitment to measurable, credible climate impact.  

And in October Crayon received the EcoVadis Gold rating for sustainability, having seen our score rise from 72/100 in 2024 to 79/100 in 2025. We are now among the top 5 percent of companies worldwide when it comes to sustainability efforts.  

In November, Crayon was selected by EUPD Research to receive an ESG Transparency Award for our credible and impactful sustainability reporting. Crayon achieved a score of 85.35% for the ESG disclosures in our 2024 Annual Report. Our performance earned us a place in the “Excellent” category—the highest possible distinction in EUPD’s evaluation framework. 

Throughout the year, SoftwareOne and Crayon were conscious of helping those in need in the communities in which we operate through our charitable giving activities.Employee well-being is top of mind and we intervene as appropriate depending on the situation. For example, we supported SoftwareOne and Crayon employees affected by the November typhoon in the Philippines by ensuring their physical safety, providing financial support, and monitoring their workloads as they navigated challenges on the ground.  

Culture, empowerment and organisational development

Crayon launched its Global Empowerment Programme 2025 in June. It is designed to support employee development, strengthen global culture and reinforce alignment across all regions. 

Further reflecting our people-centric culture, SoftwareOne APAC won Gold – Best In-House Recruitment Team at Singapore’s Employee Experience Awards in May 2025, reflecting outstanding talent acquisition and employer branding. We beat firms like PwC, Accenture and were also finalists for Talent Sourcing Strategy and D&I Strategy. This external honor underscores our focus on people and internal excellence during a period of exceptional organisational change. 

SoftwareOne’s 2025 President’s Club in Puerto Vallarta showcased how much we value our people and their contributions. Honoring excellence through recognition, cultural experiences, and community engagement, the event reflected our belief that success starts with our teams. This celebration reinforces our people-first approach during a period of exceptional organisational transformation. 

Thank you for being part of our journey through 2025. We look forward to continuing this work together – delivering innovation, value and sustainable growth as one unified organisation. 

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SoftwareOne delivers end-to-end advisory, professional, and managed services across a wide variety of use cases for IT portfolio management, digital workplace, cloud, application development, and AI.

Discover our award-winning services

SoftwareOne delivers end-to-end advisory, professional, and managed services across a wide variety of use cases for IT portfolio management, digital workplace, cloud, application development, and AI.

Author

Su Kent

Su Kent
Global Content Marketing & Analyst Relations Lead