Application Service Provider Business Research Articles

Best Practices Guidelines for Successfully Managing Application Service Providers (ASPs)

The purpose of this article is to identify various factors of success that can assist managers of Application Service Providers (ASPs) to develop and expand their firms’ businesses. These success factors are presented in the form of best practices guidelines, which have been developed from successful ASP experiences, and which are discussed in detail here. The discussion on successful ASPs, ranging across all ASP business models, focuses on meeting the customer requirements of ASPs—a major driver in the ASP market.

Towards the ASP E-Business Model: A Conceptual Framework for Mapping ASP Specific Value Propositions

ABSTRACT Today's emerging market is broadly characterised by rapid technological advances. This has consequently created an imbalance between perceived market demand for services and available technology. In the past few years, a lot of money has been invested in development and deployment of a new phenomenon called Application Service Provision (ASPn), and there has been a lot of paranoia surrounding the same. Despite the promise and potential of improving the way organisations develop, operate and maintain information technology application, Application Service Providers (ASPs) have fared poorly in terms of attracting a large client base. There is a general perception of a mismatch between consumer requirements for ASP services and actual vendor offerings. The aim of this study would be to combine both academic research and industrial investigation to propose some guidelines for resolving the current gap further examining the evolution of the ASP business model. This paper draws from a two-year research study (ongoing) on the market, business, managerial and technical challenges facing global firms, focusing specifically on traditional information systems outsourcing models and frameworks and application outsourcing, involving ASPs and web services.1 This will be achieved by investigating the current usage of the ASP market and the factors that affected the adoption and use of ASPs within horizontal and vertical business sectors. As mentioned earlier, there is an indication of a mismatch between customer expectations and vendor provisions in recent literature. Case studies would further help to understand if the vendors have taken into consideration the reasons for the models failure and evolved from their original state to be successful in the market and sustain the competitive advantage. To study the process of ASP business model evolution, a study of constructs has been undertaken.

ASP 용의 데이터베이스와 고객 데이터베이스 연동에 관한 연구

ASP(Application Service Provider) 사업에서 응용프로그램이 데이터베이스를 사용해야 하고 이 데이터베이스가 ASP 고객의 데이터베이스로부터 일련의 데이터를 제공받아야 하는 경우가 점점 더 증가하고 있다. 이를 위한 방법으로 엑셀(EXCEL)과 같은 파일 형태가 이용되는데 고객의 데이터베이스로부터 수작업으로 추출되어진 데이터가 엑셀 파일로 ASP사업자에게 전달된다. 이는 다시 애플리케이션이 이용하는 데이터베이스의 테이터내로 수작업 처리되어 저장된다. 본 연구는 두 데이터베이스 연동 시에 이러한 엑셀 파일 등을 이용하여 발생하는 데이터 추출과 저장시의 데이터베이스 수작업 조작의 비효율성을 극복하는데 있다. 이 때 두 데이터베이스 상의 속성명은 상이한 경우를 일반적인 경우로 전제하였으며 또한 웹 상에서 두 데이터베이스의 연동 시에 피할 수 없는 고객 데이터베이스의 경로 정보를 ASP 사업자에게 노출을 피하도록 한다. 제안된 방법은 두 단계로 걸쳐 데이터 프로세싱이 이루어지는데 먼저, ASP 사이트로부터 다운로드받은 프로그램을 이용하여, 고객데이터베이스를 접속한 후 프로그램의 유저 인터페이스를 이용하여 용이하게 속성 매칭하고 속성치를 XML 파일 형태로 자동 추출하는 단계와 추출된 XML 파일을 웹 상에서 ASP 서버에 접속하여 전송하고 ASP 데이터베이스에 자동 저장하는 후처리 프로세싱 단계로 구성된다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 방법에 맞는 프로토타입 시스템을 구현하여 데이터베이스 연동의 타당성을 검증하였으며, 제안된 방법은 ASP 고객의 데이터베이스를 이용해야 하는 ASP사업의 활성화에 기여할 수 있다. In the ASP(Application Service Provider) business, applications using database sometimes require some data from clients' databases. These days such data are extracted from client database using manual database operations as an EXCEL file and the ASP, once receiving this file, transfers it into the application's database using manual database operations. This paper describes how to deal with data transmitting between the client database and ASP database on the web without using database manual operations for data extraction and insertion. We propose a framework which enables to transmit client data in a systematical way, to match different attribute names of each database for sharing same attribute values, and to avoid exposing information about the network path of client database to the ASP. This approach consists of two steps of data processing. The first is extracting data from client database as XML format by using a downloaded client program from ASP site, the second is uploading and storing the XML file into the ASP database. The implemented prototype system shows the suggested data integration paradigm is valid and ASP business needing integration of client database can be activated using it.

Customer Evaluation of Application Services Provisioning in Five Vertical Sectors

How value is created for the customer from e-business is a topic of much concern in academic and practitioner circles. In the light of the dot.com downturn, numerous e-business firms ceased to exist. This paper reports the findings from an ongoing research study on the development and decline of the application service provider (ASP) industry. Having witnessed the decline of the first wave of ASPs, with many failing to convince small and medium businesses (SMBs) of the value of adopting an ASP solution, the second wave calls for a more rigorous approach that clearly identifies the key performance areas and indicators of the ASP business model. Applying the constructs of strategic positioning, product/service portfolio, and value proposition, this paper represents the findings from 215 responses to a questionnaire survey on how potential and existing ASP customers evaluate the benefits and risks of ASP. The findings suggest that, if the ASP model is to succeed, vendors will need to carefully identify customer requirements and avoid the pitfalls that beset the first wave of the ASP model, which was largely based upon a technology push strategy.

Delivering enterprise resource planning systems through application service providers

This paper presents research findings from an in‐depth study on the global application service provider (ASP) industry. It explores the potential for Web‐enabling enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for small and medium‐sized companies on a per‐seat, per‐month basis. Findings from field research suggest that, while the ASP business model offers many advantages for customers, few companies are prepared to outsource their mission‐critical ERP systems to ASPs. This situation has led to many large and small ASP vendors to re‐think their strategic business plans, with some high profile failures. Evaluating the situation from a market, organizational and technical analysis of the ASP industry, this paper argues that, while the ASP model is currently immature, the next three years will see the emergence of more clearly defined enterprise ASP offerings from key players in the software and computing services industry.

Application service providers: issues and challenges

The distributed corporate networking technology environments of the 1970s and 1980s are gaining new life, only this time the move toward distributed networks is being led by upstart application service providers (ASPs). Organizations of the twenty‐first century are going to be Web‐centric and focus their objectives on agility and cost savings. Pressure to reduce overhead in information technology (IT) pushes these organizations to consider outsourcing. With the use of Internet technology, a new alternative for IT outsourcing has evolved. ASPs allow companies to access and run software applications over the Internet on a subscription basis. By using the Web as an application platform, an enterprise can quickly and easily deploy new systems in response to market changes as well as reap the savings of using a single, standard platform. Recently, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of ASPs. This growth in ASPs has raised several issues and challenges that need to be resolved to realize the potential benefits of ASPs. Discusses the developments in ASPs, outlines the activities of various kinds of ASPs, describes the ASP business models, and examines the issues and challenges facing ASPs for their future success.

DELIVERING BUSINESS CRITICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS THOUGH APPLICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS: THE NEED FOR A MARKET SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

This paper draws from the findings of a large-scale empirical research program on the global application service provider (ASP) industry funded by research grants from the European Commission (EC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). A conceptual framework consisting of a taxonomy of ASPs is used to demonstrate the different market segmentation strategies adopted by ASPs for competing in this fledgling and turbulent industry. Drawing from empirical research carried out in the US and Europe, the paper evaluates ASP strategies for deploying, hosting, managing and enabling software applications on behalf of their customers. The ASP business model is advocated as an attractive value proposition for SMEs, dot.com companies and other start-up firms seeking hyper-growth. Yet the evidence so far suggests a slow start to the ASP market as few reference sites demonstrating best practice exist. ASPs will therefore need to re-evaluate their strategies if they are to convince potential customers of the benefits of application outsourcing. Against this background, the paper evaluates the benefits and risks of the ASP model.