Is Software as a Service a threat or opportunity for VARs that sell VPN solutions?
Many companies are now being drawn to Software as a Service (SaaS) or “cloud computing” as a way to eliminate capital equipment investment, reduce operating and maintenance costs, and increase business agility. By paying for the right to use a hosted service instead of deploying a service in-house, companies believe they can pay for only what they really need and actually use at any given time, letting their provider do the heavy lifting required to build, deliver, maintain and troubleshoot the service. But SaaS is not really a new business model for VPN VARs — VPN solutions have been delivered this way for many years by managed security service providers (MSSPs). For example, many MSSPs are willing to install VPN remote access concentrators on-site at a customer premise or in their own data center, as a hosted platform. Some MSSPs go a step further, using a shared data center platform to deliver VPN services to many customers — this is effectively the SaaS or cloud computing model,
