Schneider Electric Europe launches managed-power-as-a-service offering

Schneider Electric has cut the ribbon on a managed-power-as-a-service offering that should provide managed service providers (MSPs) with an additional piece of the jigsaw to offer to customers.

The vendor is working with its distribution partners Ingram Micro and Tech Data in the UK and in Europe to support partners around the launch. Partners that get involved will be able to offer uninterruptible power supply products and support to customers for a monthly fee.

David Terry, vice-president of IT channels at Schneider Electric Europe, said it was clear that the popularity of managed services meant that the market opportunity was also significant.

“Managed power as a service is still early stages in a very large market, it’s $160bn globally. We’re in that ramp-up phase, and [we are having] some really interesting conversations,” he said, adding that this applies to both traditional partners making the shift into managed services, but also new players.

“By partnering with select distributors across the zone and gaining access to flexible repayment terms, partners can create their own managed power service, leveraging our UPS hardware, remote monitoring software and lifecycle service capabilities to add value to customers, and transform single transactions into a predictable, monthly service model,” he said.

Terry added that customers want to work with managed service partners to help them cope with their edge computing infrastructure: “When you’re talking to IT managers and people planning their infrastructure, it is getting even more complex.”

Schneider is fully aware that the market is still developing and that there will be work to do with its distributors around educating partners on managed power as a service.

“We’ve recently changed elements of our partner programme to bring in training modules, we’ve looked at rebates and how we incentivise partners to move into this space, so there’s a lot of education [to be done],” said Terry.

“What we find is that by adding things like managed power, you increase your revenue by around about 40% on the traditional hardware sale. The benefits that come with managed power as a service is you get that stickiness with customers, it brings you into the total lifecycle of the product.

“We’re now navigating a hybrid model which is on-premise/off-premise, cloud, local; it’s even more complex so...being able to manage those types of infrastructures, the timing is definitely there.

“As a manufacturer, we’re very used to selling through our partners and supporting them. We have 140 partners signed up to work with us this way and we are training those people, so it’s going to be a busy couple of years as we as we look to ramp this up,” he added.