Can VARs use managed services to keep control of their customer relationships?
Yes. Our core message to solution providers is that your value is in your customer relationships. Managed services really promote this by giving the VAR hard intelligence data about what’s actually going on at the customer site. There’s no doubt that the remote services- delivery model of managed services is going to allow many other parties to be involved besides the VAR. As I said, you’re going to see some other providers entering the market. But this won’t be black and white, because you’re also going to see collaborative models evolving where the VAR can use the managed services platform to work with other partners in providing the final service to the customer. We’re building these collaborative features into the next version of our product. It will have roles and permissions, so for example you could contract out help desk services to India and contract out VOIP support to a VAR in another city who is an expert in that area. VARs will be able to leverage these collaboration featu
