Email sent to WebDesign-L on 04/21/2000:

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I've recently seen a lot of people talking about a new type of industry
called Application Service Providers (ASP).

http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,7278,00.html

The premise is simple. Instead of a corporation spending lots of money
developing, configuring, and maintaining their own software and large
computer systems, they hire an ASP to do the setup, development and/or
maintenance for them. An ASP's clients could be anyone from a small firm
without the finances to have their own IT department to a large corporation
who wants to save money by not having a large IT and/or MIS department,
which typically does their software development and maintenance.

ASP's usually specialize in a particular area, like database administration
or high-end e-commerce hosting, but some are branching out into the actual
development of software that makes some of these new Internet-focused
companies run. An example would be an ASP developing and maintaining a
network/system that is used by a large bank. This would include both
back-end and front-end design, as well as the configuration and maintenance
of that software. It might also include client-side application development,
with recent focus being put on application development that sits inside a
web browser or Internet-enabled application environment.

So, ASPs are a pretty cool idea, but I'm wondering who the big ones are. I
mean, most of us are aware of the big web agencies, and also aware of the
big 5 accounting firms, but in this new ASP industry, not many firms are
coming out as the leader. I'm aware that IBM is moving towards this model of
selling services, and so is Microsoft and PeopleSoft. However, all three of
those companies are pretty specialized and are biased towards selling and
supporting their own software (although IBM has recently moved more towards
open source).

I'd love to hear other opinions about the ASP model, from people who work
for one or from people who have dealt with one. Strengths? Weaknesses?

--
Cameron Barrett
Senior Information Architect
Alphanumerica, Inc.
http://www.alphanumerica.com (work)
http://www.camworld.com (play)