Lee Solt has created a business strategy that takes the increasingly popular "as a service" business model to envelop all of a client's ecosystem, and without contract limitations.

“As a service” has grown in popularity during the last few years as cloud technologies have become increasingly common, evolving from basic software-as-a-service models to something more complex by tossing in desktop and workspace solutions, for example.

Solt, however, has created an end-to-end, as-a-service solution that supports more than just the software and processes pieces of his customers' environments, while including all the hardware and network infrastructure.

This solution, which Solt (pictured) calls "Technology as a service," is sold as part of a recurring revenue package. When a client comes aboard, Dark Arts goes in, buys the company's equipment and replaces it with hardware that will support the technology Solt and his team want to implement.

"In our model, the clients don’t need [to go buy their own new equipment]. They get it as a service," said Solt, Dark Arts' founder and CEO.

To get started, clients of Long Island-based Dark Arts pay an initial fee to help cover the setup costs, Solt said. The fee is higher than similar initial fees a company would pay working with a regular managed services provider, but not significantly higher. He said the cost usually equals that for one month of service.

"That gets some skin in the game," Solt said.

But, unlike more traditional business models, Solt added, the returns are not automatically seen. "Our goal is the long term," he said.

Over that long term, Solt said, both he and his clients will see benefits from the "TaaS" business model.

Everything in the client's ecosystem is picked to work with each other and is new, making the need to repurpose or fix existing technology disappear. 

Solt said other MSPs "make a bet" about what their clients' environments will cost to support, and, many times, there is a cost for an MSP to get systems up to a manageable level; otherwise that existing technology might fail, leading to unforeseen costs for which the client will foot the bill.

"It just becomes ugly all the way around," Solt said.

He added that with the TaaS model, the cost is known up front, making the process much more reliable.