ASCII Group Offers .Net, Java Development Services To VARs

ASCII, a Bethesda, Md., organization that helps manage alliances for resellers, developed the program through a relationship with software and services firm The Jaxara Group, said Jerry Koutavas, vice president of business development at ASCII. The program allows VARs to resell Jaxara's .Net and Java development services "without the headache of project management," he said.

It also enables them to make a significant profit on the services with competitive pricing that can be marked up considerably, Koutavas said. Jaxara,

Warrenton, Va., leverages offshore agents to perform the actual application development, and Jaxara acts as the central project development team that works directly with resellers, he said.

Jaxara builds specifications for the project and provides a quote for services to the reseller, with the reseller deciding how to price the services to clients, according to Koutavas.

Brian Faust, director of operations at Highstown, N.J.-based VAR Information Automation Corp. (IAC), said his company can make as much as a 40 percent markup on services using ASCII's new program.

"We see it as a way to expand service revenue strategically into areas we should be more involved in," Faust said.

During the difficult economy of the past three years, resellers have faced pressure to expand their business beyond hardware and software resale and integration into custom application development services. This program from ASCII will help resellers adapt to these changes in their business models, Koutavas said.

"Resellers gain a huge advantage by expanding their services at competitive rates across various programming languages from the latest in Microsoft .Net to Java and also through mainframe programming languages," he said.

IAC's Faust said providing custom application development gives resellers a customer pricing model that ensures "consistent returns compared to traditional hardware and software sales."

"We maintain better margins and have better opportunities to grow in the future," he said.