Channel Partners: Revitalize Portfolio With SaaS

As channel partners analyze the ebb and flow of their various revenue streams, they might discover that adding something new to their portfolios could provoke a flood of new business. A hot opportunity for selling more services into ones existing base is software as a service, to be discussed in one of this mornings concurrent sessions.

This panel, moderated by Steve Hilton, vice president of Yankee Groups Enterprise Research group, will analyze SaaS opportunities available to agents, see whats in it for resellers and give tips to channel partners on how to best communicate the benefits of SaaS to the end user. Hilton, who writes the Ask Steve column for PHONE+ magazine, said attendees can expect to learn about the pitfalls and the best practices for channel partners selling both communications products and SaaS-based applications.

Panelist John Krzykowski, general manager for 19Marketplace, said SaaS is gaining momentum for a number of reasons, including the rise of multitenant applications delivered over the Web, the ease of implementation and the availability of broadband access to access applications from anywhere.

Panelist Robert Bye, executive vice president of nGenX, agreed that SaaS allows companies to get the benefits of new technologies such as collaboration and remote access without the investment in server hardware and IT resources to maintain these systems. Agents can learn how to add incremental revenue from existing customers without having to become an expert in IT, explained Bye. SaaS provides a consultative sales opportunity that increases value to the customer and also decreases churn because these products are so sticky.

Clark Easterling, vice president of marketing at Perimeter eSecurity, also joins the panel to discuss SaaS applications in the security arena. Attendees will learn how they can bundle Security SaaS with their services and increase their close ratios, increase customer ARPU and decrease churn, he said.

Whether you use the services to attack your customer base or your new sales, someone will be offering them security SaaS and it might as well be you.