AI is changing the way businesses operate. As AI commoditises technical capability, the value shifts to judgement about which decisions are worth making and accountability for what the technology delivers. Analyst firm Omdia expects a tougher market for partners in 2026, with growth tempered by rising costs and specialisation increasingly separating those who grow from those who do not. The pressure on partners is no longer only about acquiring technical capability but building a customer proposition that is differentiated enough to command margin, which can be challenging to do alone.
To deliver more to clients and partners, global providers of software and cloud solutions SoftwareOne and Crayon are joining forces, marking a new chapter built on complementary strengths. On 12 October, Crayon, a SoftwareOne company, becomes SoftwareOne across Asia-Pacific (APAC), the final step in a global transition announced in January and rolled out market by market, following the combination of the two businesses completed in July 2025.
Warren Nolan, Senior Vice President of Channel and Strategy at Crayon, A SoftwareOne Company, describes this move as one that goes beyond just a migration. “It’s a strategic next chapter that allows us to bring together the best of both of our organisations,” he says. What partners have valued about working with Crayon, A SoftwareOne Company, will now be amplified with more capabilities and scale.
For APAC in particular, partner relationships are built locally on an understanding of how individual markets buy, regulate and adopt technology. As such, this transition is being done market by market so that the existing local relationships and market knowledge Crayon, a SoftwareOne company, has built over the years can remain as they are and continue to benefit from years of market-specific knowledge — only now, they have significantly more capability, scale and expertise.
Crayon already brought partners services they could resell — migration and cost analysis among them. The combined catalogue goes considerably further, spanning procurement and IT portfolio management through to FinOps, data, AI, cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure. There are also more vendor programs to build a practice around, and partners can wrap those services around intellectual property they have built themselves. Nolan sees the result of this move as “a deeper vein of profitability” for partners’ own businesses, enabling partners to move beyond transactional resale into services, recurring managed engagements and outcome-led propositions, while accessing capabilities they may not yet have the scale or resources to build internally.
The promise of this next chapter for SoftwareOne lies in continuity that turns into opportunities. “The continuity today is an expanded opportunity tomorrow,” Nolan says, adding that “the relationships, the people and the partner-led way of working remain firmly in place.”
Nolan sees the same shift in what partners sell. He explains, “The partners who will win are those that will work their way from being resellers into advisory and management services with outcome-led engagements.” For some partners, that will mean building those capabilities internally. For others, SoftwareOne can provide the services bench, expertise and global delivery capability that allows them to participate in those opportunities sooner.
The promise of this next chapter for SoftwareOne lies in continuity that turns into opportunities. Nolan says, “The continuity today is an expanded opportunity tomorrow…the relationships, the people, and the partner-led way of working remain firmly in place.”
To find out more about SoftwareOne and how partners can stand to gain from this next chapter, visit https://www.softwareone.com/en-au/now/crayon-channel-is-becoming-softwareone-in-apac-partner-update
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