Power Play: Partner Profitability With Power Management-As-A-Service

The global reach to cloud computing and rise of the Internet of Things are causing a data center hardware retreat. But you don’t have to start from scratch to find the market’s sweet spots. In the dawn of the ‘as-a service’ era, solution providers are revamping--not rebuilding--their offerings at the edge. The network edge, that is.

“The trend that we’re seeing right now is a lot of changes, a lot of disruption and this is something that we can definitely take advantage of. As servers are becoming fewer and fewer, we are helping partners refocus. We are helping them move their power practice from server protection to networking protection,” says Herve Tardy, VP/GM distributed power quality division at Eaton.

Power management-as-a-service gives solution providers the chance to turn a traditional one-time Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) hardware sale into predictable recurring revenue. But diving into managed services can be overwhelming.

“Those are areas where we’re kind of dipping our toe in the water from the software side. It’s a learning curve for us, trying to get people to understand that there is a difference in product and it goes far beyond just the product, it’s the service, it’s the support, it’s the warranty. It’s all the other add-ons to service a customer for the long-term,” says David Shields, CFO at Shields Electronics Supply, a five-year partner of Eaton based in Tennessee.

Offering power management-as-a-service gives you--the solution provider--the opportunity to get more repeat business from your customers and ultimately become their trusted advisor.

“One of the things that’s great is that we now have a better relationship with our customers when we’re in a managed service environment,” says Nancy Marks, chief operating officer at Starnet Data Design, a California-based company that’s been a partner with Eaton for over seven years.

Gartner predicts that, by 2020, more than 80 percent of solution providers will have shifted to an as-a-service model. And as this becomes a bigger part of your business, Eaton is making it simple for you to expand your offerings and stay competitive.

“We want it to help them detect the opportunities, to help them really close the sale of the Eaton solutions in an easy way for them,” says Tardy.

Eaton’s learning management training system program provides partners with training and certification on solutions like Intelligent Power Manager (IPM), PredictPulse and Visual Power Manager (VPM), all on a single online portal.