With two decades in software sales and leadership positions, Stuart Heavyside, PTC’s senior vice president and channel chief, is leading the nearly $2 billion IoT software provider’s charge into Software as a Service.

“The transition to SaaS is going to drive a huge amount of revenue, which the channel is going to take more of,” he said. “We should see the pie get bigger and with that the channel get bigger as well.”

PTC partners account for about one-third of the company’s annual sales, Heavyside added.

Based in Boston’s Innovation District, PTC’s portfolio includes computer-aided design (CAD), product life-cycle management (PLM), application life-cycle management (ALM), and service life-cycle management (SLM) offerings designed to enable manufacturers to create and service products.

Windchill, PTC’s PLM software, is expected to be the first of the legacy PTC offerings to move to SaaS, followed by Creo. PTC is also working on new channel program incentives to drive the SaaS transition, he said.

Heavyside joined PTC in 2011 and was promoted to senior vice president of worldwide CAD sales in 2019. He briefly left the company to join SaaS engineering software provider Jama Software as chief revenue officer. He returned to PTC to oversee Onshape, the Cambridge, Mass.-based cloud CAD company acquired by PTC, as senior vice president of sales. He took the channel chief job in February.

“I’ve had my head deep in SaaS for three years now,” he said. “I am bringing that experience to bear as we make the transition [to SaaS].”

In an interview with CRN, the self-described tech geek discusses PTC’s sales strategy, its evolution to SaaS, and the many ways channel partners can make money on the technology.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.