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as needed without dedicating additional resources to each
new customer.
Prior to the release of LyntonWeb’s solution, many potential
customers avoided engaging with the company because they be-
lieved the costs were too high for developing solutions for critical,
yet mundane, everyday problems. By automating a commonly
used integration process, LyntonWeb lowered the up-front and
long-term costs and created an opportunity to reach an entirely
new market of low-touch, price-sensitive customers in the cloud.
Packaging Intellectual
Property, the Right Way
In order to be successful, channel partners must keep the
following four requirements in mind while
creating packaged IP:
•
The solution must be easily repeatable
– Mini-
mal customization is a necessity, since the
more specific tweaks demanded by cus-
tomers, the less repeatable the solution
will be. If an important feature is added
for one client, it should be applicable to
many clients and should be considered as a
future addition for the core product.
•
It needs to be automated
– The purchase,
deployment and running of the product
need to be friction free. Customers need
a real solution to specific problems, so
the product should solve an important
need, then run seamlessly in the back-
ground until the customer wants to ex-
pand or change their solution.
•
Subscription-based pricing is critical
– By
providing a subscription-based service,
customers don’t have to worry about up-
front costs, and SIs and VARs can build an
ever-growing stream of recurring revenue.
•
The problem solved needs to be applicable at
scale
– Don’t just make up a new problem
and hope customers want to see it solved.
It is important to see what problems your
current customers face, and then analyze
which of those problems occur across
customers in similar scenarios. Think
urgent and pervasive.
In addition to the four strategic prin-
ciples mentioned above, SIs and VARs
seeking to create packaged IP with mini-
mal up-front investment are turning to
integration platform as a service (iPaaS)
offerings. Most iPaaS offerings take care
of a lot of the integration work behind the
scenes, connecting apps and moving data.
The right iPaaS products allow SIs and
VARs to create, store and reuse compo-
nents of an integration (such as data map-
pings) and customize forms and data flow
via API calling. With an iPaaS underpin-
ning your IP, once you create a pre-packaged solution, you
can sell it again and again as a productized offering.
The market for SIs and VARs is changing, and nothing can
stop this trend. It’s inevitable that companies will continue to use
cloud services, removing high margins and lengthy on-premises
deployments. By taking the time to strategically understand cus-
tomer problems and working to create a unique solution that can
easily be scaled, channel partners will open themselves to a num-
ber of new markets that were previously out of reach. Once cloud
IP is productized, SIs and VARs can create the recurring revenue
they need to succeed in the new cloud services world.
John Joseph is vice president of marketing for Scribe Software
59
January - February 2016
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Channel
Vision