Any IT expert will tell you it's important to be able adapt to today’s ever-changing market, and the most critical transitions resellers need to make tend to be the toughest.

Discussing the biggest opportunities for resellers, ScanSource executives insist that switching from the traditional reseller model to a managed services model is the most important move for partners to make. The Greenville, South Carolina-based distributor has put significant time and resources into helping its partners kick-start this evolution.

Sometimes that can be difficult, ScanSource CTO Greg Dixon said in an interview.

"Managed services is now the new frontier for [our resellers]," Dixon said. "It’s not an easy thing. A lot of customers are smart and are way out ahead of the game, while others are just now adopting this thing. Others are saying they don’t ever want to do this, and those are the guys in trouble."

"Most of the customers that we have are in that transition, but most of them, to use a baseball analogy, are in the first inning or even in the top of the first, so they just started," said ScanSource President of POS and Barcode, Paul Constantine in an interview. "So what we’re trying to do there is bring tools and solutions that can help them get to the second, third and fourth inning and make that transition over time."

Constantine emphasizes that although it is absolutely necessary, making the transition from VAR to MSP is a long, hard road. There are many large financial adjustments that come with switching to a subscription-based model, and cash flow hurdles that need to be resolved and clarified early in the process.