The computer reseller business model has been, and still is, very much about making money from fixing things. In fact, not just fixing them, but patching, updating and adding on extra stuff to make things work properly and remain secure. And after 3 or 4 years, you can make money all over again by changing everything because the vendor has announced ‘end-of-life’ for its products (that’s if the customer still trusts you).
This ‘traditional’ reseller model relies on customer pain, and lack of awareness of pain free alternatives. It is painful for the customer, stressful for the reseller, profitable for the vendor, and the only way to scale such a business is to grow engineering resource that eats up your profits.
But what about cloud computing? Well, yes, there is cloud computing, but in reality it’s not the panacea the marketing hype has promised (I wrote about this here). The reality is going to be (it has in fact been for a long time) more hybrid computing, so the above model will persist.
There is, however, another model for resellers working in the SMB sector. One that is profitable and will have you jumping out of bed in the morning, not to fix a server that’s crashed, or pacify a customer who’s cloud service is offline, but to grow your business of happy customers. A model that avoids customer pain at every turn, removing the stress and cost of having to constantly fix things.
If you are an IT reseller in the SMB space then you will likely have been selling MS SBS. You may still be selling it, even though it has been ‘canned’ by MS. Maybe you don’t know of an alternative, or perhaps you are worried you don’t have the necessary skills. There is an alternative, one that’s easy to migrate SBS customers to (we have a migration guide), and that provides a more robust, secure and pain free solution to your customers and you; the Igaware Linux Small Business Server. You won’t need any Linux knowledge, there’s no hardware to build or software to load. It’s very easy (read this).
The Igaware Linux Small Business Server has been engineered to be rock solid, secure and easy to use and has a proven track record over 15 year. The Igaware Linux Small Business Server is delivered in rude health, and is monitored throughout its lifetime, kept healthy with constant updates, and upgrades, and support is just a phone call away. The Igaware Linux Small Business Server looks after itself, releasing you from the patching merry-go-round, and taking away the worry of the server crashing. Fit and forget.
And because customers find it reasonable to pay for using a small business server that is rock solid, secure, maintained and supported, there is a recurring revenue stream that flows straight to your bottom line.
To learn more about becoming a reseller, drop an email to sales@igaware.com
Related articles: http://www.igaware.com/blog/igaware-linux-small-business-server-easy-linux-sbs-linuxsbs-igaware/