Why SoftwareOne is Technologent’s partner for growth

Technologent was founded in 2002 as a Sun Microsystems reseller but has since evolved into a global end-to-end provider of IT services and solutions operational in seven countries. The secret of Technologent’s growth to generating over half a billion dollars in annual revenue has been to respond to technological change by broadening its portfolio and staying one or two steps ahead of the competition every time.

“Whenever we diversify, we seek new partners that help us take that on,” says Tom Teague, Microsoft Practice Director at Technologent, based out of Austin, Texas. “We don’t always have the necessary know-how about a new line of business or vendor, so we lean on our partners to educate us and to help us scale.”

This is the story of Teague’s engagement with SoftwareOne (formerly Crayon), and the considerable uptick in business Technologent’s Microsoft arm has been able to achieve as a result.

“When we decided to add Microsoft to our offering, there were big challenges early on,” says Teague. “Our offering was generic and we didn’t have a comprehensive strategy until SoftwareOne showed up.”

“To be effective with Microsoft, you need a massive team – that is more or less dictated by Microsoft’s huge catalog of products from your bread-and-butter Microsoft 365 to a list of cybersecurity solutions that’s as long as your arm. To be a competent Microsoft partner, it’s essential to have a lot of diverse subject matter experts on your team. There is no profitable way for Technologent to do that.”

What energized the relationship between Teague and SoftwareOne was the arrival in 2021 of Michael Vidos as Senior Partner Development Manager at SoftwareOne’s South Carolina office.

“Michael and his team have been a real windfall for us in terms of scaling our Microsoft business,” says Teague. “SoftwareOne’s relationship with Microsoft is a massive benefit, and with specialists across so many Microsoft domains, SoftwareOne brings a lot to the table.

“When there’s an emergency and we need to move fast, we’re not always big enough for that. But SoftwareOne has the size and scale to do that for us – anywhere in the world. We had a Microsoft Artificial Intelligence opportunity last year. We had plenty of AI SMEs, but no one who really knew how to do the Microsoft version of that. After we alerted Michael [Vidos] to the issue, SoftwareOne was on the phone to our client the following day.

“If we can move quickly, we pick up a lot more business,” Teague comments. “SoftwareOne helps us move fast and convert those opportunities.”

Another example where the partnership with SoftwareOne proved decisive in transforming a customer relationship was a fast-growing healthcare technology company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.

The AI team came up with a solution that had so much potential that management decided to put all its eggs in one basket and focus almost exclusively on developing and selling this new tool.  Then the team that had built it sounded the alarm. ‘Whoa, wait a minute, this was an experiment, it can’t scale for wide-scale adoption,’ they continued. The increased demand brought the application to a crawl, and that’s when IT turned to us,” Teague explains.

“We pulled in the SoftwareOne team, and they just absolutely crushed it. They were able to talk the full depth of AI at a data scientist level and how to do all this in Azure. This not only got the job done for the customer but put us in a position of trusted advisor. We had previously done very little with this customer, but a project of this importance opened a lot of doors for us. And that’s huge.”  

Perhaps the largest segment of potential opportunities are Technologent’s large US customers that have direct relationships with Microsoft. A pivotal part of the initial dialogue centers around the changes Microsoft made in late 2024 to its Enterprise Agreement. “We are targeting mid-tier customers that are going to be pushed out of the EA program,” says Teague.

“SoftwareOne always crushes the initial conversation around optimizing Microsoft licenses and servers, containerization, beefing up security, getting the most out of Azure, FinOps processes, and so on. The customer soon understands that we know what we are doing and that we can have the resources to be transformative.”

A parallel avenue for growth is Microsoft’s drive to get its users into bigger packages for Microsoft 365. “The products bundled in there are really good and it becomes price advantageous versus buying multiple products from multiple vendors,” says Teague. “However, getting those products deployed functioning properly and providing a consistently high level of service across the portfolio is not always easy; SoftwareOne has got that handled.”

A third pain point for companies that have run Microsoft independently for a long time is legacy systems. “What is very common among all businesses is that they’ve had a Microsoft tech stack for 20 years, maybe more. They are band-aiding a system that is broken to the point where the mess of tech debt becomes overwhelming. What we are able to do now with the involvement of SoftwareOne is lay out a roadmap to rectify the situation and fix it.

“Being instrumental in solving such huge and persistent problems creates tremendous trust and loyalty, not just for our Microsoft practice but across all of Technologent’s activities,” Teague comments.

The bulk of the growth generated by the partnership between Technologent and SoftwareOne has so far come from the TOLA (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas) sales territory.

“We need to replicate that success across all regions,” Teague believes. “Michael is working with us to do roadshows that reinforce the relationship and help local sellers understand how to identify opportunities within their customers. Next thing you know, they hit us up, and we plug in the right people and go on a campaign.”

The key to the success of the Technologent/ SoftwareOne collaboration is communication. “It’s as simple – and unusual – as that,” says Teague. “Knowing on a first-name basis who within SoftwareOne can solve a problem for one of our customers is what makes this partnership tick.”

“We know it’ll get done if SoftwareOne has told us it is possible – and with the same white-glove service every time. That is my overarching value proposition with SoftwareOne; together we have the ability to do things at great scale with Microsoft without ever over-promising.”

“This is why I messaged our sellers and other people in the company that when it comes to Microsoft, SoftwareOne is our growth partner,” concludes Teague. “And we have so far only scratched the surface of that growth.”