Our value chain
We will explore avenues to leverage the heightened scrutiny and prioritization of sustainability matters, spurred on by CSRD and the EU Taxonomy, to engage more robustly with value chain actors to advance our ESG strategy.
Value chain features
Consistent with our business model and strategy, SoftwareOne operates as a business-to-business (B2B) software reseller. We act as an agent to facilitate downstream customers’ access to software and cloud licenses provided by upstream software publishers/vendors and hyperscale cloud providers. This places us in the middle of the value chain for our industry segment.
Our operations include sales/licensing, deployment, development, design, and marketing of software services and solutions.
Inputs and resource dependencies
Our key inputs or resource dependencies include:
- Human capital in the form of our employees: our employees’ expertise enables us to support customers in navigating digital transformation, optimizing cloud usage, and aligning software strategies with business needs.
- Software and cloud services and solutions: these are our core offerings that depend on our relationships with software publishers and suppliers, and with cloud hyperscalers.
- Energy: to power our offices and handful of data centers.
Benefits created for stakeholders
Communities
We create employment opportunities in the countries where we operate and revenue generation opportunities for business partners and service providers. We contribute towards local and national economic development through taxes paid to local, regional and national governments.
Customers
We help customers maximize their software and cloud investments by reducing costs and leveraging new opportunities in AI.
Employees
We cultivate an attractive and inclusive workplace underpinned by SoftwareOne’s six core values of integrity, momentum, passion, accountability, customerfocus and trust. Our people-first culture prioritizes employee well-being and development.
Shareholders
We create long-term value for our shareholders by achieving consistent growth in profitability, following through on our business plans, and communicating with capital markets in a timely and transparent fashion. For more information about shareholder benefits created, please refer to the section The SoftwareOne share.
3)Expressed in full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), we had 12,712 FTEs in 2025.
Upstream
We have a large international footprint and interact with thousands of software publishers, vendors, and suppliers—primarily headquartered in North America—along with three hyperscale cloud providers.
The key characteristics of our upstream relationships are outlined below.
Software publishers
Software publishers design or create software solutions, sometimes including a cloud storage component.
Top software publisher by volume and strategic importance:
- Microsoft, which provides software and cloud services used internally by SoftwareOne, as well as our customers downstream.
- Our high commercial dependency on Microsoft poses inherent risks. To mitigate this, we are diversifying our capabilities.
Other important software publishers include, but are not limited to:
- Atlassian, Adobe, Broadcom, Citrix, IBM, JetBrains, Nutanix, Oracle, Red Hat, ServiceNow, think-cell, and VMWare.
Software distributors
Software distributors act as intermediaries between SoftwareOne and software publishers.
Major hyperscale cloud providers
Hyperscalers are differentiated from other cloud storage providers by their global accessibility and reach; their enterprise orientation; and the software-/product- agnostic nature of their platforms.
Our three major hyperscalers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure.
Business partners and service providers
To support in-country operations, we have myriad relationships at the local level. Examples include:
- Banking and financial service providers (e.g., lenders and creditors)
- Caterers
- Couriers
- IT providers (e.g., hardware and software used internally by SoftwareOne)
Downstream
Our downstream value chain includes both indirect and direct customer relationships. In total, we have +70,000 customers.
Channel ecosystem partners:
- Partners distribute SoftwareOne services to more than 200,000 end-users
- These partners are a combination of cloud resellers, hosters/managed service providers, and independent software vendors (ISVs)
Direct customers:
- Direct customers across public and private sectors
- Include small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large corporate clients