Schneider Electric has seen demand for edge solutions accelerate over the past year and has reacted by arming partners with a managed services approach to offering power protection.
The vendor has cut the ribbon on its Edge Software & Digital Services Programme, which includes a range of benefits and certifications to give channel businesses the opportunity to create a managed power services practice.
Those that sign up will be able to gain recurring revenues from remotely monitoring and managing their customers’ physical network infrastructure.
The vendor quoted figures that sized the opportunity, with only 27% of managed service providers (MSPs) offering managed power services, giving its channel plenty of chances to get ahead of competitors.
“The acceleration of edge computing presents an enormous opportunity for IT solution providers to increase their recurring revenue streams by selling managed power services,” said David Terry, vice-president of IT channels at Schneider Electric Europe.
“We have built a comprehensive programme for partners that simplifies and speeds up the time required to set up their managed power service practice. This will enable partners to address their customers’ needs through effective monitoring and management of their customers’ edge sites, which is now considered a mission-critical priority.”
The vendor revealed the programme to partners at a virtual event earlier this month, with the focus very much on the momentum in the growth of edge playing into the hands of those that could help customers protect their infrastructure in increasingly varied environments.
“The acceleration of edge computing presents an enormous opportunity for IT solution providers to increase their recurring revenue streams by selling managed power services”
David Terry, Schneider Electric Europe
“Edge is growing massively. The trend was growing progressively over the course of time, but 2020 forced that to happen in the sense that we’ve had to go from a gradual increase in edge working to essentially everyone now working from home and creating a very distributed IT infrastructure,” he said.
Santini added that it had become clear that customers need to have power added into the managed service agreements they have with partners looking after other parts of their physical infrastructure.
“The need was there. It is an opportunity for [partners] because it’s quite easy and simple for them to include in the portfolio. But the threat is that if they don’t do it, they will lose that customer to their competitors because customers are now being led by services, not by product. They’re looking for outcomes, not hardware. This is really about making sure partners can align themselves to that,” he said.
“I don’t believe there is any other partner or vendor in the market that is doing what we’re doing right now, certainly not in the broad way that we are doing it,” added Santini. “This programme is enabling our partners to adopt this model in any way that fits their current service level.”
