‘We consider ourselves both a reseller and a vendor’ Adaptavist CEO on channel strategy

Simon Haighton-Williams discusses global growth, AWS marketplace and a potentially looming trade war

“One thing I'm always worried about is just focusing on growth and providing a very poor experience,” Adaptavist CEO Simon Haighton-Williams tells CRN.

“It’s really important that we're both winning market share and delivering quality as well.”

As we step into 2025, Haighton-Williams shares his ambition for the US-based company, his plans for the IT channel, and takes a nuanced stance balancing caution for the future and business optimism.

Adaptavist was founded in 2005 by Alain Moran, Dan Hardiker, and Guy Fraser with the goal of becoming the biggest Atlassian partner in the world, a mission that the group has since “refined a little bit.”

“I think of ourselves as a technology and digital services business,” says the CEO.

“We want people, after they've interacted with us, bought things from us, been our customers to think that we helped make their business better.”

The group “uses the channel heavily” as it is not only part of other people’s channels, being “in the top three biggest channel partners for Atlassian”, but also has its own channel, with 90 to 100 organisations the company resells its products through.

“Our channel programme primarily consists in reselling our products.

“We consider ourselves both a reseller and a vendor.

“Our channel probably resells around $50m to $70m of our own product.”

Looking into 2025, the CEO says Adaptavist “has spent a lot of energy this year, taking our services and retail businesses around the world and putting them under a single brand” and will likely aim to refine and polish that this year.

“One of the things that we have announced this year is our AWS partnership and the growth of that, which means we expect the AWS marketplace to be significant for us in 2025.

If the company is so confident about its growth next year, it’s because it’s been growing “a big chunk” every year since Haighton-Willians took over in 2011.

“It's been a compounded organic growth.

“We've probably done 30 to 50 per cent a year organic growth.

“We've also done a bunch of acquisitions along the way.

“The advantage of organic growth is that you don't have to rip out all your systems and replace them.

“The disadvantage of organic growth is you can only grow at a certain rate.

“There's a lot of opportunity upside.

“If you look at the fact that we've just started off in the AWS world, the potential there is massive, and the potential for some of the large deals that we have lined up to close is huge.”

“We expect to probably do at least 20 to 30 per cent next year, and ideally we’ll do more than that.”

This projected increase comes despite tough macroeconomic conditons, as the world has been “through a whole bunch of headwinds last year.”

“It's difficult to know how it’s going to play out,

“There's a new government in the US, and lots of people are saying it will be good for business. Hopefully it will. Maybe it won't. Who knows?

“We also have operations in Ukraine, so the war there impact us to a degree.

“The world at large is a complicated place at the moment, but we're pretty optimistic.

“I think people want to get on with business and do things and hopefully 2025 will be good.

“Would we prefer that the world was a bit smoother and easier to plan for? Yes, but we accept that it's not, and we are ready to deal with those changes and unpredictability as they come along.”

Keep reading to find out more about the vendor’s growth strategy around the world and Haighton-Willians predictions for 2025...

Growth, risks, and predictions

In terms of acquisitions, the company has been pretty quiet recently, as it hasn’t made any mergers in 2024.

“We've looked at a lot of businesses and decided not to acquire them again because of some of the global uncertainties.

“Whenever you do some M&A, there's a risk profile, and we've decided not to take those risks, and consolidate our internal systems instead, to make future buyouts easier.

When it comes to the UK market, the vendor has “shown consistent growth throughout the last ten years” despite some “ups and downs.”

“The UK market is still small compared to the US market, and it comes with a unique set of challenges and complications.”

The CEO adds that “Europe is a complex set of markets.

“We launched into Italy this year, very successfully.

“We’ve seen some growth in Spain, which is great news.”

Haighton-Willians also adds the company is looking to further develop into the Nordics, as it doesn’t “do a lot there” yet.

“More globally, the US has got its new government in, and we expect to be growth there.

“And by the US I mean the whole NORAM region, so we expect a lot of growth in Canada as well.

The vendor also intends to rely on its partners to develop throughout the world.

“Our main partners are Atlassian, AWS, GitLab, monday.com.”

The business also doesn’t count any “pure competitor” as they are also customers.

“We have a very multifaceted relationship with people.

“There are organisations like Valiantys, a French Atlassian partner, who are also one of the largest resellers our product.

“So we have a lot of “frenemy” relationships with a lot of our partners out there, which we think is a good thing.

“We think that strength is in the diversity of offerings that we have.”

Looking into what this new year has to offer, the head of the company tells CRN that “the rise of marketplaces” will change the channel “pretty deeply”.

“And you look at the European legislation that is coming in, it's difficult to know what the impact of that will be, particularly with all of the political changes going on in Europe and the US at the moment.

“I fear that there'll be some sort of trade war, which will be unpredictable and probably do nobody any favours.”