Challenges Still Exist For As-a-Service Adoption

During Monday night’s Welcome Reception/Solutions Expo at the 2013 ScanSource Partner Conference, I had a conversation with a solutions provider and a vendor executive about financing the as-a-Service model. The VAR said selling Software-as-a-Service is a no-brainer, but hardware is a completely different story because financing that part of the deal still hasn’t taken shape. The VAR was hopeful because he felt distributors are positioned to partner with a third party to finance Hardware-as-a-Service. The vendor concurred, adding: “We [vendors] are not bankers.”

 

A few folks asked me about last week’s Channel Transitions VAR/MSP Executive Conference, hosted by Business Solutions. Whenever I share that we focused our event on the as-a-Service business model, the responses ranged from “that’s an important topic” to “that’s a really important topic.”

 

Additionally, a well-respected solutions provider who generates over 50% of his revenue through services had a great quote during the reception: “Except for services, everything else you do is duplicatable. Only you control your services.”

 

It's clear to me that we, at Business Solutions, are on the right track with our as-a-Service content and initiative. It's also clear that there's a lot of education and changes that need to take place in the channel before solutions providers can fully embrace the model and experience all the benefits it can offer.