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If there’s going to be an “IT 3.0” or a “Channel 3.0,” the marketplace masters will be those companies that crack the code for “solutions as a service.”
Two years ago while working at the now defunct VARBusiness, I coined the term “Channel 2.0.” At the time, the channel was already showing shifts in the way IT technology product and service delivery was conducted, the relationship between vendors and solution providers, and the needs of the business-technology consumers. Channel 2.0 intended to look five years into the future to divine the shape of the channel of the future.
Little did any of us know how rapidly the world-and the technology marketplace-would change. Services were always an important part of the mix, but it was difficult to say how important services would become to vendors, solution providers and end users.