WWT CEO On ‘Supercharging’ Cisco, VMware And Microsoft Relationships, Hiring Spree And Booming Softchoice Sales

‘If I netted it out this year on the Softchoice side, I am betting we will see 50 percent [revenue] growth. And we’re just scratching the surface,’ Jim Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO of World Wide Technologies, tells CRN.

World Wide Technology is firing on all cylinders this year as drives its enterprise portfolio successfully into the SMB and midsize markets thanks to its $1.3 billion acquisition of Softchoice.

A little over a year past the close of the deal, WWT co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh is on a hiring spree in order to keep up with massive customer demand as WWT elevates Softchoice’s base of over 5,000 customers and deepens partnerships with Cisco and Microsoft.

“If I netted it out this year on the Softchoice side, I am betting we will see 50 percent [revenue] growth. And we’re just scratching the surface,” said Kavanaugh in an interview with CRN.

Even with over 14,000 global employees, the $20 billion-plus St. Louis-based channel superstar is on a hiring spree as SMBs and midmarket customers are now clamoring for more WWT services and solutions.

“Our head count will be larger in 2026—by far. We’re absolutely hiring hundreds of more people,” said Kavanaugh. “We’re being thoughtful, methodical and very aggressive in the investment we’re making into Softchoice’s account reps and into engineers that support Softchoice that we need to bring on to sell the entire World Wide portfolio into the Softchoice accounts.”

WWT’s New Microsoft Push

The WWT-Softchoice merger isn’t just a one-way street either.

Toronto-based Softchoice is bringing WWT into new accounts in Canada as well as taking WWT’s Microsoft business to new heights. Softchoice is an award-winning Microsoft partner with over 30 years of top-notch Microsoft experience.

“With all that World Wide and Softchoice are doing in leaning into AI and driving AI use cases and implementations and Copilot and other opportunities—that could be Agent 365—there’s a lot of things that we’re looking at there,” said Kavanaugh.

Nina Harding, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Americas Global Partner Solutions, said Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is doubling down on WWT around co-sell execution and in priority markets like AI.

“The responsibility that large enterprises have entrusted to WWT for their digital transformation is perfectly matched to Microsoft’s frontier platforms,” said Harding. “Softchoice’s strong presence in the SMB and midmarket is now benefiting from WWT’s global scale and engineering depth to create a true end-to-end model for customer transformation.”

Kavanaugh took a deep dive with CRN into WWT’s winning formula with Softchoice, what type of new employees he’s hiring, revamping vendor relationships, sales growth and much more.

Talk about WWT’s hiring strategy in 2026. Are you growing Softchoice’s head count?

Yes, our head count will be larger in 2026—by far. We’re absolutely hiring hundreds of more people.

We’re growing the Softchoice reps. We’re adding additional engineers and resources that are complementary to the capabilities that they have today.

We’re being very aggressive around hiring on the sales and business development side and the consulting and software development side.

That is also very much aligned with what we’re doing with Softchoice in hiring different types of engineers—who are probably aligned more to higher-end compute engineers, network engineers, cyber engineers—that are complementary to what Softchoice is doing.

We are being very thoughtful and methodical, but also very aggressive, in regard to investments we’re making into Softchoice—into their account reps, into the engineers that support Softchoice that we will need to bring on to actually sell the entire World Wide portfolio into the Softchoice accounts.

We’re seeing meaningful and material growth as we speak, but I still believe we’re just scratching the surface in regard to turning the knob and seeing that flywheel really start to take effect.

WWT is known for organic growth, not growth via acquisitions. Why did you buy Softchoice, and how much sales growth do you expect from Softchoice in 2026?

The reason for Softchoice was because we didn’t really have much of a presence in the SMB and low end of the commercial market before, but it’s now playing out better than we wished. We also didn’t have a big presence up in Canada.

When looking at different companies, one of the things we wanted was somebody complementary and synergistic so not necessarily overlapping and competitive where you’re going to get into this challenge when you try to integrate the companies where you have all these overlapping pieces.

So there’s very, very little overlapping conflict of sales reps and go-to-market things.

You never know on acquisitions, but I was very happy about the strategic reasons why we made the acquisition of Softchoice.

And I’m very, very happy about the people and the culture. Just great people, smart, ambitious, hardworking, they fit the culture and the core values of World Wide, which is really important from an integration standpoint, so we feel like we have synergized that.

If I netted it out this year on the Softchoice side, I am betting we will see 50 percent [revenue] growth. And we’re just scratching the surface.

Being one of Cisco’s and other vendors’ top global partners, what is WWT doing to drive new growth for Softchoice’s SMB and midmarket customers?

If you think about just around Cisco, they were a good Cisco partner, but they didn’t do a ton of Cisco business, relatively speaking, so there’s a big opportunity to be supercharging that.

That’s the same thing when you look at Dell. And you look at things that we’re doing with VMware, Softchoice was a partner with VMware—we’re supercharging that by bringing in more value and more capability.

Softchoice had a good relationship with VMware. Obviously with Broadcom acquiring VMware, and them looking at how they kind of skinny down their partner base—[Broadcom is] investing more aggressively in the remaining partner base.

With Softchoice and WWT together, we have built a really complementary and very value-added bidirectional partnership with VMware. So that is growing. Our services business there is growing quite significantly, and our resale business in the markets where VMware allows resale is growing.

So if you look at some of the tier-one OEMs that are big partners with World Wide, we are bringing all that expertise to Softchoice in their existing customers and adding additional reps that are going after new accounts.

Softchoice is a big Microsoft partner in the SMB and midmarket space. What is WWT’s future with Microsoft now?

Microsoft is a really big one that Softchoice brought to WWT.

When you look at Microsoft, they are everywhere, they’re ubiquitous.

To take the relationship that [Softchoice President and CEO] Andrew [Caprara] and his executive team had in the expertise they built around Microsoft is something that we just didn’t feel we were going to grow ourselves, and we weren’t going to be able to go get those certifications.

Now, I feel like we have a lot to bring to Microsoft from a value prop because they have different competitors today than they had two or three years ago. There’s a lot of co-opetition out there around the AI large language models, whether it’s Google or it’s Anthropic.

So how that AI world is evolving, the value prop that World Wide brings to Microsoft is probably more meaningful today to Microsoft than it would have been two and three years ago.

With all that World Wide and Softchoice are doing in leaning into AI and driving AI use cases and implementations and Copilot and other opportunities—that could be Agent 365—there’s a lot of things that we’re looking at there.

I was just up at Microsoft’s CEO Summit last week. I had a great couple of days that was led by [Microsoft Chairman and CEO] Satya [Nadella] and his entire executive management team. Really excited about the partnership with Microsoft.

We’re just scratching the surface in the opportunities that we have to work and partner with Microsoft in a very, very strategic and meaningful way. And that is something that has not necessarily been core to World Wide in the past.

How can WWT provide a portfolio that can scale from Fortune 100 clients all the way down to SMBs? Is there demand for that?

World Wide’s total addressable market [TAM] is just massive. The U.S. market, the North America market, and even the global market—the TAM for IT infrastructure modernization, for AI, cybersecurity, software development, digital transformation—is just so massive.

So you can come to the conclusion that the TAM is not the problem or the challenge. The demand is there.

It’s about, ‘How do we get very good at bringing the right value prop and not one that’s too expensive to the SMB space so that we don’t [overprice] that go-to-market strategy, methodology and approach?’

Because that’s going to be slightly different than the approach that we take for an enterprise customer. Because you can’t have the number of people and resources sort of ‘hanging around a hoop’ in an SMB account like you do in a big enterprise, in which you would need those resources if you’re looking at the entire portfolio of things that they are interested in.

We have to curate that go-to-market in regard to the SMB space, the commercial space, the slightly higher-end, and then also the big enterprise space. We are doing that, and that’s a work in progress as we go forward.

Part of that is automating and operationalizing through software and AI our back-end capabilities.

Also, the vendor world is evolving, and it’s very complicated based on all the co-opetition going on.

The landscape is crazy complex, and that barrage of complexity is also what the customer is dealing with.

They want a partner that can help them sort through the madness and help them make intelligent decisions as the technology continues to leapfrog each other. So it’s an exciting time for us.

Talk about WWT’s growth and your future.

Over the last two years, our net income has been well over 30 percent [growth]. It’s tracking that, and then some, this year.

I don’t take anything for granted. Our history does not predict the future.

The day you take your eye off the ball and you’re not working your tail off because you think you have it figured out is when you don’t have it figured out.

So we are grinding away with a significant level of healthy paranoia every day, but also equally excited and seeing very good success.

I feel very fortunate about the great people that we’ve acquired with Softchoice. And for Andrew for keeping that leadership team still intact and to be really part of the collective team is very exciting. Because not all acquisitions go so well.