"In all the years I've been in business, I've never seen anything like it, in terms of the economic sector reeling," said Dan DiSano, president of IT soulution provider Axispoint.

"It has an impact on the overall economy," he said. "We're a global company, but local New York business in particular will suffer. For example, if you focus on retail and your location is by Lehman's building, you'll suffer. Thousands of people won't be going to that location any longer. In addition, there are firms that focus on the financial sector; if you focused 50 percent on Lehman and Merrill, you're in deep trouble. Hiring firms are in trouble too, with the fall of those corporations in addition to others like Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase looking to cut."

The collapse of the investment banks coupled with the recent failures of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac will have a detrimental impact on the entire economic ecosystem, said Vivek Mehra, Vice President, Global Financial Services and Insurance at IT consultant Keane Inc. But there are also opportunities for solution providers.

"The economy will clearly slow down as a result of lack of credit in the markets," Mehra said. "IT spending will be a mixed bag -- there will be greater spend in areas such as risk management, compliance, reporting and auditiing, as well as spend on IT outsourcing -- as a means of reducing IT operational cost. Discretionary spend will decrease."

With the focus on trimming back and buying on need vs. want, VARs that can provide services aimed at improving return on investment, or cutting costs outright for clients, will position themselves well for the future.

"Projects that are focused on reducing costs will get higher priority especially if they can show a clear ROI," Phil Neray, vice president at database security company Guardium said. "In part, those will have to do with reducing compliance cost. For example, many companies initially instituted simple, manual approaches to SOX, so they are now looking at automating those controls. "

The key will be to stress how a VARs' product offering and services can help companies do more with less. As credit gets tighter, spending scrutiny will become more intense.

"Our company will probably see minimal negative impact however, simply because our business model is one of saving our customer's money," noted Mark Metz, CEO of solutions provider Corus Group, of Norcross, Ga. "IT projects and spending are going to be under further scrutiny. With capital being tight, CFO's are going to look closer at each investment and hopefully this won't lead to a slowdown in innovation as projects will be judged primarily on cost savings." In addition to focusing on companies' newfound pledge to frugality, solution providers should be on the look-out for new potential customers that are likely to arise from the rubble.

"For the near term, those who sell IT to the I-banking segment wirehouses will likely feel some pain," said Brian Caron, who handles investor relations for ASP Trintech. "But for every worker who starts a new firm or joins a new firm, that is a potential new account and as the capital markets industry becomes more fragmented, that may be a good long term situation for smaller and newer players as there will be more decision makers."

For those with expertise in the financial sector that has been carefully cultivated, there may be the opportunity to parlay it into other segments. Products that can enable customers to implement new business initiatives will have legs.

"For example, bring a new SOA solution to allow partners to have a more efficient online ordering system. So there's not only opportunity for that kind of product, but also the security that goes along with it. As more infrastructure is opened up, the right security must be put in place," said Guardium's Neray. "Many financial services companies have outsourced day-to-day operations to offshore facilities. The right security and controls are needed around those DBAs." A layer of security is needed by many companies to protect against intrusion, whether accidentally or intentionally.

VARs shouldn't assume that because there's a crisis in one part of the financial sector that the entire industry should be abandoned.

"There is something to be said about domain knowledge," said DiSano. "Financial services is pretty vast: Commercial, investment, insurance, hedge funds. Some sectors are really hurting, but still there is money on the sidelines. So, take a hard look at your skill sets internally, and see what sectors within financial services you could support."

Controls and data governance are the key to minimizing risk and avoiding loss, and will likely be the types of products finance firms will want to implement in the near future, said Erik DiGiacomo, a managing director at ALaS, which offers its industry-agnostic DocPort product to VARs. DiGiacomo has first-hand experience in the financial world, having come from leading the securities group at the Shared Services division of Washington Mutual Bank.