Reselling Is Out, Services Are In

The largest resellers and DMRs were saying as recently as 2008 that they had no intention of getting into services, Bibby said. Almost no one is saying that anymore.

More than half of VAR revenue in 2005 came from reselling products, Bibby said. But by 2014, that figure was down to 35 percent.

VARs that have made the leap into services are also moving up the food chain from variable professional services to higher-profit repeatable managed services and from custom services to building intellectual property, applications and reusable component methodologies, Bibby said.