Softline, a Moscow-based international software licensor and IT service provider, has acquired a minority stake in its Norwegian IT counterpart Crayon, the company announced earlier this month.
Although the amount of the deal has not been disclosed, Russian business daily Vedomosti reports that Softline may have put around $12 million on the table to acquire its stake in Crayon. The transaction was negociated with the support of ITI Group, a brokerage and financial company backed by Da Vinci Capital.
Crayon touts itself as “the global leader in software asset management (SAM), cloud and volume licensing and associated consulting services.”
The Russian company sees in the deal the opportunity “to scale Crayon’s expertise [in the field of SAM] to its target emerging markets, namely Asia and Latin America,” according to Elena Volotovskaya, Softline’s investment director.
This expertise “will bring significant growth to the high-margin part of the business, namely IT services, and in a mid-term perspective increase net margin of the whole Softline’s turnover by 1-1.5%,” she added.
Volotovskaya believes that the global IT service market will enter a phase of consolidation in the next five years. Softline is willing to take part in this process.
