Techplus Distribution adds TriActive to MSP offerings

Techplus Distribution will now offer interested resellers Triactive's Software as a Service systems management product.

Techplus is an Australian data communication and WAN acceleration distributor.

TriActive Systems Management On Demand solutions provide asset management, patch management, software distribution, software categorisation, remote control, service desk, and license compliance to manage each of the PCs within an organisation simply via the Internet. This is perfect for highly mobile or distributed workforces.

In an interview with CRN, Paul Kern managing director at Techplus Distribution, said US-based SaaS vendor TriActive, signed a distribution agreement with Techplus Distribution to provide TriActive's SaaS-powered Systems Management On Demand technology to Techplus’ partners in Australia and New Zealand.

“The addition of TriActive's solutions provides management capabilities that complement Techplus partners' current offerings, enabling them to tap into the significant growth opportunity being experienced by Managed Service Provvider (MSP) in Australia,” said Kerns.

He told CRN the advatage of this product for resellers interested in the ‘lucrative’ MSP market is there are not upfront set up costs. “There are no high upfront costs. Resellers call up and we go out and demo the product, then they go and sell services and functionality around the product. They pay for the license when the customer agrees to buy the product. It’s a no risk way of getting into the managed services market.”

Kerns claimed the margins for the product were in the 30-50 percent - for just the license. “On top of that, resellers can sell additional services. They can also sell licenses at whatever rate they like and this provides the base for all sorts of add-ons.”

According to Kerns TriActive approached Techplus to help build it an Australian channel. “[The vendor] thought we were a good fit and could target the resellers with interest in this market.”

He claimed the distributor now had a stron reputation in the market and no longer had to go out and search for vendors. “We are growing strongly and have had more interest from serious vendors. We are getting a lot more calls from vendors chasing us to represent them in the data communication and WAN acceleration market.”

Kerns said the business was going strength to strength and the distributor recently doubled its head count. “We were very small this time last year. We have basically doubled our reseller count from 350 - this time last year – to 700 active.”

He believes more and more resellers are interested in become MSPs because of the narrowing of margins on hardware, and with software going in the same direction, “resellers want get back the margins they use to experience in the old days.”