Sage’s Business Partner of The Year for 2007 and 2008 and Accounting Technology’s #10 VAR on the VAR 100 had essentially gone out of business leaving employee’s, clients and the Sage community scrambling for answers.

The super sized VAR, which had grown by acquiring several Sage Business Partners, had apparently completely shut down which left all of their customers in the lurch. Whatever the explanation – financing problems were mentioned on the web site – the end result was the same and the company left hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of employees and customers in the lurch.

While details are still likely to emerge in the coming weeks – this surprise shut down may lead some to question whether what’s known as the “Super VAR” may now be defunct as a business model.

Conventional wisdom has held that by pairing up with a larger VAR that customers and consultants had much better protection against a sudden economic downturn. Instead what we’re seeing is that perhaps the opposite is true. Are larger VARS less able to react to unfavorable economic climates?

This seems like it might be the case especially where operations are centralized and not distributed out to local offices which continue to run their own businesses.

Instead the business model that I think makes the most sense is still the pairing up of VARS. Except I firmly believe each local branch office must manage themselves for profitability and share (but not totally rely upon) any one member or VAR for all fo their resources.

In the coming few years I expect to see such poolings of resources where the “best of the best” in VAR organizations form affiliations that pool experiences in a distributed manner with each office bringing a skill set to the organization. Perhaps gone forever are the days where one VAR buys up competitors and houses them all under one centralized roof.