BlueStar Sees Bright Future For Channel In Hybrid SaaS, Mobile Pay

BlueStar held its largest convention to date with its VARTECH Nation in New Orleans last month and is now looking ahead at new opportunities in the channel, according to Global Marketing Manager Dean Reverman

BlueStar, based in Hebron, Ky., works globally with about 20,000 VARs annually.

At VARTECH Nation, which hosted some 1,500 solution providers, Reverman said the distributor touched on major opportunities for VARs across the channel. These included payment systems and mobility payment solutions along with BlueStar’s hybrid SaaS offering for 2015.

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Hybrid Saas, he said, will be a big development and BlueStar will offer the solution to their partners.

’We’re creating a hybrid SaaS where the VAR can still sell the job and get all their money up front, then the end-user gets the monthly payment on it,’ he said. ’It has the benefit of end users having that monthly payment so they have an operational expense, but the VAR still gets paid.’

Reverman said BlueStar is also focused on opportunities in peripherals for devices, which he said ’like tablets, smart devices are disrupting the channel.’

BlueStar offers bundled in-a-box solutions to channel partners as well as education and tools to help VARs bolster their marketing strategies. Reverman said marketing will play an important role for solution providers come 2015 and estimated 50 to 60 percent of the small- to medium-sized VARs BlueStar works with are prepared.

’Just at VARTECH we had a basic ’Social Media 101’ [seminar] that was the second-most attended classes that we had,’ he said. ’Social media has been around for a while but for a lot of VARs, they still don’t understand it, and they don’t understand how to effectively use it. … Social media is one item they can do themselves very easily that, with just a little bit of strategy behind it and a little bit of knowledge, they can use very effectively.’

When it comes to point-of-sale and mobility payment solutions, Reverman said the industry is still in a holding pattern, waiting to see how everything plays out with many new modes for payment emerging, including ApplePay. About 20 percent of smartphone users have Apple devices, he said, so it’s too early to tell how ApplePay will impact the market.

’We think it will be obviously an influencer in the marketplace, but how EMV shakes out and what actually occurs, we’re still in a ’wait and see’ mode to see,’ he said.

Even though many developments in the channel are changing now, Reverman said there are still plenty of opportunities for partners from here.

’For me, disruption means opportunity,’ he said, ’as long as the VAR has in their holster … the ability to create opportunities for their end-users. …That’s our role. We have the right product to facilitate our clients’ needs, no matter what the solution is.’

PUBLISHED OCT. 14, 2014