Intelisys, ScanSource Laud Massive Partner UCaaS Win, Celebrate Verizon Growth

(Pictured above: ScanSource’s Mike Baur on stage at Intelisys Channel Connect this week in Monterey, California.)

INTELISYS CHANNEL CONNECT — The Intelisys/ScanSource partner base is moving up-market.

ScanSource CEO Mike Baur hailed a recent partner-led UCaaS deal as the largest the channel has ever transacted. He said the bid amounts to $340,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

Baur said the deal signals a shift beyond an SMB customer base.

ScanSource’s Mike Baur

“Now we’re moving to enterprise, and that’s where all the big opportunities are. And the suppliers — they can’t manage all of these large enterprise deals, they’re seeing the success of channels like ours in the SMB space and they’re saying, ‘OK, if you can do 100 seats, you can do 1,000, 10,000, 100,000,'” Baur told Channel Partners in an interview.

Intelisys president Jay Bradley said his sales partners have accrued enough experience over the years to earn larger end-users’ trust.

“As they’ve grown up, they’ve educated themselves and know where the targets are. [The bull’s-eyes] have changed over the years,” Bradley said. “I credit the partners because we’ve done a good job of educating them and they’ve done a good job of listening.”

Baur told the partner audience at Channel Connect this week that ScanSource has invested an additional $100 million into Intelisys.

“This whole idea of digital transformation is everywhere, and we want the partner community to know that we have everything they need,” he said. “And if we don’t, they just need to ask us, and our team will provide it.”

Tools are a big area of investment. Bradley said the company will hire seven programmers to help with the efforts. Baur said more than 100 programmers are already on staff.

“We believe having great tools has always been important to the community. And the tools we have – the ones that are coming out – will be better than anybody else has. We will be known as the place of the best. And we have the resources to keep it,” Baur said. “No looking back, no matter what those other guys keep saying.”

We wrote about how ScanSource’s acquisition of RPM Software will improve partners’ experiences receiving commissions. ScanSource’s purchase of intY targets the customer experience as the distributor takes on more cloud services. ScanSource hasn’t historically sold application software, but intY’s cloud platform, Cascade, helps partners deliver SaaS solutions from vendors like Microsoft, Symantec and Acronis.

“We needed a platform so we could allow our community to quote, configure, deploy and renew software as sold on a subscription basis to an end user,” Baur said.

The Cascade platform includes an AI-powered tool called Partner Insights, which provides customer cloud consumption data and makes product recommendations based on the data.

ScanSource, a South Carolina-based IT distributor, acquired Intelisys three years ago.

Verizon

Verizon earned Intelisys’ supplier award for top revenue growth.

Intelisys’ Jay Bradley

Bradley credited his company’s 2017 Kingcom acquisition as the event that launched the relationship between Intelisys and Verizon. Bradley and his team saw that the time was right to buy Kingcom, which sold exclusively with Verizon, when the carrier indicated that it would invest more in the indirect sales channel.

“They’ve come to our channel community in a really big way. They made a commitment to the channel, and we felt like we wanted to make a commitment back, because we saw this big opportunity,” Bradley said. “Verizon hasn’t always been a super channel-friendly part of the ecosystem. So we believe them when they said, ‘We’re coming back with a vengeance, and we want the partner community to be big, big part of our sales.'”

Netflix

Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph shared how his company overcame hurdle after hurdle. One was …

… beating Blockbuster after a decade-long struggle. That came after Blockbuster executives laughed off an opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50 million.

“In some ways, it’s inspiring, because a handful of people with no prior experience took down a $6 billion market-leading company. But what if you’re the $6 billion market-leading company?” he said.

The folks that face disruption must understand that up-and-comers will not challenge them in their strong areas. They will innovate in the areas where you are most weak. Netflix in its acquisition proposition had offered to run Blockbuster’s online business.