01732 759725 30 INTERVIEW When the company launched in 2012, then operating under the PrinterLogic brand, its tagline – eliminate print servers – was simple and at the time, highly disruptive. Today, as cloud adoption continues to accelerate, that proposition has become the norm, but according to Wedig, it took years of persistence to convince both customers and channel partners that a different approach to print infrastructure was possible. “It took us about five years of pounding that message and actually winning deals for it to become a reasonable statement. Up to that point, it was very provocative,” he said. While MPS providers were primarily focused on hardware sales, Vasion approached the market from an IT infrastructure perspective. Wedig brought networking expertise from Cisco Systems, while his co‑founder had extensive systems administration experience. “The technology behind how you would eliminate your print servers without making a mess was not something most MPS providers could easily manage. They didn’t have the technicians to be able to describe the network connectivity requirements. I was deep into network technology and understanding how to eliminate print servers. My partner was a sysadmin for the state of Utah, he very much understood network connectivity, so we came at it from a completely different angle,” he explained. A difficult start in the channel Despite Wedig’s goal to adopt a channelled model, the company’s early years were dominated by direct sales. Having previously worked exclusively through partners at Cisco, Wedig initially wanted to replicate that approach. “We really wanted to only sell through partners,” he explained. “But what I found out really quickly was that with a disruptive message that saves customers so much money, people can’t make as much money on your solution, you don’t exactly make friends in the channel.” As a result, Vasion built a direct sales organisation focused on engaging with IT decision-makers rather than print specialists. “If we wanted to survive, we had to get to the IT professionals and describe how we were going to get rid of scripting, GPOs and print servers, and how that ROI lined up with their private cloud strategy,” he added. The strategy proved highly successful. As cloud adoption accelerated, Vasion’s proposition aligned closely with broader infrastructure modernisation initiatives. Over time, more vendors began adopting similar language around print server elimination, helping to validate the market opportunity. “There’s a big difference between not needing print servers and actually eliminating the need for print servers,” Wedig noted, adding: “What we saw them do is decouple their technologies from requiring a print server to work. But what we were doing was something actually quite different. We were replacing all the functionality of the print server. “We enjoyed 500% to 600% growth in the early phases and then moved into 70% and 60% growth rates. Even today, we target 30% growth, which is a very aggressive place to be in a declining market.” The channel catches up According to Wedig, the channel environment that exists today is far more receptive to Vasion’s model than it was a decade ago. When organisations accelerated digital transformation initiatives during and after the pandemic, many MPS providers began evolving into MSPs. At the same time, recurring annual revenue models became increasingly important. “Post-COVID, seeing 10% to 20% of MPS providers convert towards MSPs created a major opportunity for us,” he said, pointing out that the company’s MSP portal, originally developed in 2016 and launched in 2019, has become a significant growth engine. Vasion now supports more than 14,000 customers worldwide. Around 6,000 are large enterprise customers, while approximately 8,000 are served through the MSP ecosystem. “The 8,000 customers through that MSP portal are indirect customers and that’s the only way they can buy our product,” he added. The portal allows MSPs to manage multiple customers through a single interface, provide first-line support and integrate billing directly into their own operational systems. “You have to be able to create a monthly billing model,” Wedig explained. “You need to give them access to the system and the ability to manage customers from a single pane of glass.” With more than 750 MSP partners globally, the growth potential is huge. Michelle Ryder spoke to Vasion CEO Ryan Wedig about the company’s channel-first strategy and why partners are central to accelerating adoption of intelligent print automation following its recent launch to market Vasion puts channel at centre of its growth strategy Ryan Wedig
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