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Comments or Suggestions?
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By Jim Bonadeo, ASP Delivery Manager, The Alexander Group, Inc.
Finding successful business solutions means understanding, and properly integrating, Web-based ASP and BSP.
Certainly the adage "We do business the old-fashioned way" has become less and less meaningful since the Internet has become more available and less costly to utilize. The days of doing business directly with the owner and sealing the deal with a handshake has given way to e-business where you transact business through an impersonal and faceless Web site.
Never seeing or talking to a live employee leads you to believe the company is owned by some giant futuristic computer with a small payroll and huge electricity bill. While this new business model is convenient, it has done little to nurture and improve customer relationships.
Enter e-commerce, which allows the convenience of the Internet with more personalization than your corner mega-store. E-commerce is here to stay -- the mind-set of doing business has always been to do things bigger, better, and cheaper. In the software application world this means ASP (Applications Service Provider).
The idea of centralizing your software applications utilizing a more powerful server and a less powerful (thin) client is not new. You may remember that this is exactly how computing started out. Software applications were run on a large mainframe computer and were accessed by people with “dumb” computer terminals that could do little on their own.
Computer technology has exploded during the last 30 years, allowing us to bring more computing power to the desktop. History, like fashion, is cyclical – the days of centralized computing are back with the new ASP name.
While the method of delivering centralized software applications may not be new, your business methodology should be. In order to survive, ASPs must offer integrated front-to-back business solutions, access to software applications and information portals, as well as a collection of integration and consulting services to improve your customer's business processes and technology environment.
ASPs should not only offer software applications, but expertise in a particular vertical market and customized solutions to solve their client’s business-related problems.
BSPs (Business Service Providers), unlike traditional ASPs, sell solutions as well as service. Along with assuming the burden of running your software application for you, they redesign how these applications fit into your business.
BSPs design methods and applications that work together. By adapting an ASP service delivery model, these solutions can be offered at a price that’s attractive to small and start-up companies. Simply providing an outsourcing solution to traditional IT software delivery is a non-compelling value proposition.
Providing the ability to solve business problems quickly through a tightly integrated suite of software and business practices is what's attractive to today's e-business executive. ASPs deliver IT operational expertise, BSPs deliver tightly coupled and scalable business solutions.
As business moves towards Internet-based solutions, the role of ASPs and BSPs should be clearly understood. ASPs gives you the tools to do business, BSPs take these tools and along with business consulting expertise, tightly integrated software solutions, and vertical market expertise, integrates them into your organization.
Designing successful Internet business solutions requires these two areas to be tightly coupled together. Each is dependent on the other and cannot exist entirely on its own.
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