2025 Year in Review: Growth, New Markets and Strong Partnerships
2025 was a year full of strategic decisions for Soft & Cloud. We expanded our business model, established a subsidiary in Italy and entered into important partnerships. In this review, our Managing Director Philipp Mutschler and the heads of our strategic growth areas – Francesco Li Greci (Country Manager Italy), Juan David Morales Vivas (Key Account Manager Spain) and Mirco Scheld (Channel Sales Manager DACH) – share their perspectives on an eventful year.
At Soft & Cloud, we have embarked on a clear path for 2025: away from pure licence trading and towards comprehensive consulting and strategic partnership. Today, we combine on-premise licences, cloud solutions and licence advisory services into a comprehensive approach.
"Our customers now receive more than just used licences. They get a complete, independent Microsoft licensing strategy from a single source," explains our managing director Philipp Mutschler. "Each customer is accompanied by a dedicated contact person throughout the entire licence lifecycle: from analysis to procurement to revision. For many companies, this is the decisive added value. We are a partner who provides independent advice and thinks economically together with the customer."
This strategic realignment reflects the changing requirements of the market: companies are no longer just looking for cheap licences, but for partners who understand their complex licensing landscapes and help them reduce costs without taking compliance risks.
Italy: First major step towards internationalisation
With the establishment of our Italian subsidiary Soft & Cloud Italy S.r.l. in April 2025, we have reached a decisive milestone in our internationalisation strategy. Italy was the obvious choice as our first expansion market for several reasons: it is one of the largest European on-premise markets, but at the same time underserved in terms of independent licence consulting.
Our Country Manager Italy, Francesco Li Greci, reports on the first few months: "The Italian market is very relationship-oriented. Companies and public institutions are looking for partners they can trust, rather than just suppliers. The response to our approach has been very positive from the outset. We were able to quickly win our first customers because we understand their specific requirements. The combination of local presence and Soft & Cloud's many years of expertise is our greatest advantage."
Our Italian subsidiary was able to start right away with an experienced team and today serves enterprise customers and public institutions in particular.
Spain: Structured development of our next market
In parallel with our establishment in Italy, we began systematically developing the Spanish market in 2025. Here, too, we see great potential for independent licence consulting and cost-optimised solutions.
Juan David Morales Vivas, our Key Account Manager Spain, is responsible for market development: "Spain is a highly interesting market for us. Many companies are under enormous cost pressure and are actively looking for alternatives to the classic licensing models of the major manufacturers. At the same time, awareness of compliance and legally compliant processes has grown significantly in recent years. We are deliberately positioning ourselves here as the independent partner that combines both requirements: cost efficiency and absolute legal certainty. The first projects are already running successfully, and the feedback confirms our approach. We have clear growth targets for 2026."
Partner network: scaling through strategic collaborations
In addition to geographical expansion, we invested in expanding our partner network in 2025.
Mirco Scheld, Channel Sales Manager DACH, coordinates a team that primarily supports resellers: "The channel is a strategic growth driver for us. We work specifically with partners who share our values and want to offer their customers real added value. We are not competitors for system houses or consultants, but rather complement their portfolio. They benefit from our price advantages, our TÜV certification and our expertise, enabling them to offer their customers better solutions. This works because we consistently focus on partnership rather than displacement."
This partner strategy is proving effective: in 2025, we were able to establish many new strategic partnerships and significantly expand our existing business.
Quality as a foundation: TÜV certification and awards
Our consistent focus on quality and process reliability pays off. We rely on independent certifications. More than ten years ago, we were the first dealer in our segment to have our processes audited by TÜV, and we have successfully repeated this every year since then. This continuous review ensures legally compliant, transparent and traceable licence transfers.
"TÜV is a central anchor of trust for us," emphasises Philipp Mutschler. "It confirms our process quality, our transparency and our compliance with all legal requirements. In a market where many providers come and go, this certification is an important signal to our customers: Soft & Cloud stands for tested, reliable and legally compliant processes."
This focus on quality was confirmed several times in 2025. We are particularly proud of winning the IT-BUSINESS Distri Award 2026 in platinum in the refurbishing category – a vote in which the customers themselves cast their votes.
In addition, we were recognised by the business magazine FOCUS as one of the 300 fastest-growing companies in Germany.
Market development: Cost optimisation meets Microsoft momentum
The year 2025 was marked by two key trends: rising prices in the Microsoft environment due to incentive reductions and changed cloud policies, as well as a clear shift towards cost optimisation in companies. This development has further strengthened the software remarketing segment.
"We are seeing significantly more enterprise projects, higher volumes and greater professionalisation on the customer side. The increasing demand for on-premise perpetual licences is particularly interesting. Many companies are returning to hybrid models because they want more control over their costs and to reduce their dependence on cloud subscriptions," reports Mutschler.
Outlook for 2026: Three clear priorities
Soft & Cloud has set three strategic priorities for the coming year:
- Consistently expand internationalisation
- Expanding our partner network for larger volumes
- Strategically position product and service portfolio
Our focus is on further developing the existing markets in Italy and Spain and tapping into additional EU markets. We intend to further strengthen our international partner network in order to significantly scale procurement, projects and services.
We continue to focus on strategic partnerships. Our goal is to jointly handle even larger and more complex projects and to expand our partner network both geographically and thematically.
Services related to M365 and infrastructure optimisation are part of our portfolio and underline our positioning as an independent partner. The goal for 2026 is to further sharpen this focus and clearly anchor it in the market in order to provide customers with sustainable and effective support in cost optimisation.
"We are entering the year with a clear plan," summarises Mutschler. "At the same time, we remain flexible. The Microsoft ecosystem is dynamic – price adjustments, changed incentives and unclear roadmaps are a reality. For us, this means becoming even faster, involving our partners more closely and continuously adapting our offerings to customer requirements."
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