IT ChannelVision Europe: Microsoft Pushes Services Business Models

That's the theme that Manciagli will hammer home in a presentation titled "Hot Channel Money Making Trends For the Future" on Thursday at IT ChannelVision Europe, which is owned by ChannelWeb parent Everything Channel , a division of United Business Media.

"If system builders continue to try to make money building customized PCs and desktops which are declining they are going to face difficult times ahead," said Manciagli. "System builders need to reshape their business model and rethink what a system builder does. For those that do there is a huge amount of service revenue for them to get in the future and much more profit.

"We are all reinventing ourselves either as companies or individuals," she said. "The good old fashioned system builder must reinvent themselves. We and the rest of the industry have been saying it for years and it is here. The time is now."

One hot market opportunity for system builders is the software-plus-services market, said Manciagli. "Many think that is the future, but it is here right now," she said. "Those that are getting into it are winning right now!"

Among the opportunities in the software-plus-services marketplace are selling monthly recurring revenue software subscriptions, integrating hosted solutions, or even hosting software for customers, said Manciagli. Another avenue is a managed services business model charging clients for desktop management for a monthly subscription fee.

One of the big benefits for the software-plus-services model is the ability to drive services revenue from existing customers leading to the "stickiness of that customer" over many years, said Manciagli.

Other potential new business model opportunities include data center optimization, storage management, virtualization services, business process consulting and optimization and migration and application integration, said Manciagli.

Manciagli said that only about 20 percent of system builders are selling servers despite the fact that they are the best suited to target that market given their trusted advisor role within small and medium businesses.

"System builders make great money on services when they offer them," said Manciagli. "What we want them to do is add more solutions to their basket."