In essence this is the beginning of the end for the small VAR (under $1 million operating capital and at least $500,000 in gross license revenue in the previous 12 months).
It's a natural progression where we've gone from growing ERP new license sales to stagnant. I continue to view this as mostly a mirror image of what happened in the networking area.
Years ago (in the 1980's) you could swing a stick and hit a dozen or more pretty big shops selling Novell Netware. And I'm pretty sure they all made good money on the sale of the product.
Fast forward to today - and except for a few pretty large IT shops that seems to service the Duponts and Aetna's of the world - there really does not seem to be any model where people think they make money re-selling Microsoft networking.
Where's the model? Consulting.
That will happen too in the ERP space -- my prediction...