SoftwareONE enters into a strategic agreement with Microsoft for application services and SAP on Azure

SoftwareONE to expand its application services and SAP on Azure capabilities by hiring and training up to 5,000 additional specialists by the end of 2023, in line with the SoftwareONE and Microsoft business plan and expected revenue growth over that period.

Microsoft to provide SoftwareONE with investment, training, certification and engineering engagement for practice development

Dieter Schlosser, CEO of SoftwareONE, said: “The extended agreement with Microsoft is a testament to the longstanding and successful relationship we built over the last 30 years and will help SoftwareONE to achieve its growth ambitions in the two focus areas of application services and SAP in the cloud. This will ensure we address some of the major needs that our customers will have over the coming years to drive their digital transformation.”

“Our customers are looking for help modernizing legacy applications and their SAP infrastructure. Our cloud services are an incredible asset to help them through this transformation. SoftwareONE, one of our Azure Expert Managed Service Providers, has seen this as an opportunity as well, so it was a natural choice to align our objectives for the benefits of our joint customers. We expect this agreement to help us transform over 3,000 customers worldwide in the next three years”, said Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner at Microsoft.

Strengthening of application modernization services

Applications are a vital support for organizations and their processes. Still, many of these applications have become obsolete, as they no longer respond to the dynamics that customers need, cause high administration and maintenance costs and are slowing down business innovation processes. Modernizing an application can bring companies operational cost savings along with less administration and support burdens. Research analysts expect that 80% of all new applications developed will be deployed on containers by 2024, which increases the need for experts with specific skills and process know-how. The deepened relationship with Microsoft, and the Microsoft Advanced Specialization credential for “Modernizations of Web Applications on Azure” will further equip SoftwareONE to support customers to build and implement their application modernization strategy.

”The collaboration with Microsoft allows SoftwareONE to strengthen its Application Modernization Advisory and managed services team which will significantly expand our capacity for software developers, architects and designer over the next three years. We will bring these expanded capabilities to our global customer base, helping them transform legacy applications from old into cloud-enabled technologies”, Joaquin Potel, the global owner of SoftwareONE’s application services business, commented.

Supporting SAP journey to Azure cloud

In recent years, SoftwareONE has accelerated its SAP cloud competencies both organically and through several strategic acquisitions, brining market-leading technology competency to the global customer base, helping them with their SAP journey to the cloud and S/4HANA adoption. According to industry estimates, SAP’s platform upgrade fuels a market opportunity of an estimated USD 100bn by 2027.

Daniel DaVinci, global owner of SoftwareONE’s SAP services business, said: “In combination with our made-for-cloud SAP services portfolio, this agreement with Microsoft provides us an exceptional opportunity to extend and further develop our SAP on Azure center of excellence, our SAP service accelerators, and managed platform offering worldwide. This enables us to provide our customers a reliable pathway to realizing the benefits of the Azure cloud platform for modern SAP systems”.
João Couto, Vice President for SAP Business Unit at Microsoft, said: ”We see a tremendous market opportunity to support SAP customers in accelerating their transformation journey to the cloud. SoftwareONE is one of our global partners with our SAP on Azure Advanced Specialization, that has shown great speed in ramping up their SAP business practice. We are excited to tackle this opportunity together and help our joint customers.”

ABOUT SOFTWAREONE

SoftwareONE is a leading global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions, headquartered in Switzerland. With an IP and technology-driven services portfolio, it enables companies to holistically develop and implement their commercial, technology and digital transformation strategies. This is achieved by modernizing applications and migrate critical workloads on public clouds, while simultaneously managing and optimizing the related software and cloud assets and licensing. SoftwareONE’s offerings are connected by PyraCloud, its proprietary digital platform, which provides customers with data-driven, actionable intelligence. With around 7,700 employees and sales and service delivery capabilities in 90 countries, SoftwareONE provides around 65,000 business customers with software and cloud solutions from over 7,500 publishers. SoftwareONE’s shares (SWON) are listed on SIX Swiss Exchange. For more information, please visit https://www.softwareone.com/en. SoftwareONE Holding AG, Riedenmatt 4, CH-6370 Stans