Q&A: POS ISV And VAR Growth Opportunities

POS (point of sale) vendors are actively pursuing ISV (independent software vendor) relationships, creating growth opportunities for ISVs and VARs.

In the September 2006 issue of Business Solutions, we examined the new technologies and market opportunities for VARs selling POS printers. In addition to those new opportunities, there is a growing trend among vendors to recruit ISVs to develop applications tailored to the vendor's POS products.

Highly specialized software products are generally not available from hardware or software vendors. Although ISVs have been around for some time, this remains a largely untapped sales channel for vendors and a big opportunity for channel companies such as POS developers and POS software integrators. POS VARs also can benefit from this trend, as it leads to new specialized POS software products — potentially opening new market opportunities.

The ISV/vendor relationship also is valuable because it provides a built-in lead generation machine for both parties. That's why many vendors now have ISV programs in place to grow this segment of the market. We asked three industry experts about the POS market and their ISV relationships. Jeff Burroughs is the distribution program manager for Epson. Epson produces a wide array of POS products including printers, displays, terminals, touch screens, connectivity modules, kiosks, and consumables. Karl Schoessler is the executive director for POS-X, Inc., a company that sells bar code scanners, cash drawers, pole displays, printers, and complete POS systems. Michael Trader is the president of M2SYS Technology, a company that specializes in fingerprint recognition technologies — often used in conjunction with POS equipment.