'The world is not an easy place to run a business right now' - SoftwareOne tells CRN why it's rebranded

Meet the new SoftwareOne as CRN chats to its global chief marketing officer and president of software & cloud to get the lowdown on why the partner giant chose to rebrand now

It's a new year and a new look for software and cloud solutions provider SoftwareOne, which has unveiled a new brand identity to try and reposition itself as having evolved to new market challenges and opportunities.

The partner giant has previously spoken about its ongoing evolution over the last five years from licensing reseller to global, 'all-in-one' provider, but concedes it has struggled to get the message across to the market.

To find out more about what its latest revamp means for SoftwareOne and the channel (aside from a sleek new black and white logo) CRN spoke with global chief marketing officer Susanna Parry-Hoey, and president of software & cloud Neil Lomax to get the details.

What's changed? And why now?

"I've been here for two years as CMO and we have not yet been able to articulate our move from being essentially an IT reseller to becoming an end-to-end IT services partner," said Parry-Hoey.

"The purpose of the brand is to encapsulate and articulate this and be able to reposition our company and the way we can actually show to our clients and our talent is part of that."

She asserted the group is going to be modern, fresh, and digital and cloud-first moving forward, something it has not done in the past.

The CMO also revealed how the company has studied and streamlined its entire portfolio - covering cloud and application services, SAP services, digital workplaces, security and FinOps - to make it easier for clients and customers to optimise its software and cloud services.

On the topic of customers Lomax added further insight following his own conversations with clients.

"When I speak to customers they're quite surprised that almost 50 per cent of our business is services today," he said.

"We do a lot of things outside of what sometimes the perception of SoftwareOne has been in the past.

"But of course, that's a great foundation of the business. But really, we have a very broad mix of offerings now for our customers, but still staying centred on being what we call a software and cloud solutions provider, and we think that's really where we own it."

When will SoftwareOne's rebrand come into effect?

SoftwareOne is present across 90 markets globally.

The exec duo told CRN the global rebrand begins at the corporate level, followed by the English speaking markets over the remainder of Q1.

The additional, large non-English speaking markets will start to be impacted in Q2, with the group's entire footprint flipped by the second half of the year.

How will this affect the channel?

Parry-Hoey claimed that for partners, SoftwareOne's facelift will make things easier owing to its more "clearly articulated" value the group can provide customers.

"We can now more specifically articulate our joint value proposition and our joint go-to-market with our partners," she said.

"So just as we're going to market ourselves directly we'll be working this through all of our indirect and our partner channels over the next few months.

"And we've had some remarkably positive early responses from AWS from Microsoft, as we've begun to share it at the highest levels."

What SoftwareOne wants the channel to take away

SoftwareOne has been on a growth trajectory over the past few years, snapping up more than 15 companies along the way.

With this new remodelling, its goal now is to raise awareness and position itself in front of the market much more "aggressively".

"The world is not getting an easier place to run a business right now," Lomax said.

"Keeping customers and employees happy and engaged, to retain growing a business, it's very, very difficult.

"But what we can say about the software and cloud arena is, whether customers want to or not, they will continue to spend more money on software and cloud every year.

"Therefore it's really, really important that when they do spend more on software and cloud that they can take a full end-to-end view.

"I think that's what SoftwareOne is offering these customers and the partners with their solutions.

"It's more important than ever for customers to take that end-to-end view as they operate in this tough environment."