Latest trends and issues in the ASP service market

2001

Abstract Which applications are organizations outsourcing to ASPs? What did they hope to gain? And what are the critical success factors for organizations using ASPs? To assess these issues we cosponsored a study to assess organizational attitudes and adoption metrics for ASPs. Our survey garnered 256 usable responses from businesses regarding their use of ASPs. The study indicated that a significant number of respondents believed ASPs offer a fast-track way of implementing IT projects.

Benchmarking: An International Journal, 2003

Discusses the application service provider (ASP) model, which is emerging as a new form of application outsourcing. At present, the ASP marketplace is largely vendor driven with huge numbers of vendors offering a variety of applications to the customer. These offerings may belong to software applications such as enterprise resource planning, collaborative and vertical industry. Even though there are many benefits attributed to this model suggests that, in order to reap these benefits, customers should evaluate the offerings of the ASPs. Addressing this purpose develops a taxonomy to identify the various ASP offerings and a framework to evaluate the ASP offerings on categories such as security, pricing, integration, service level agreement, and reliability, availability and scalability. Even though this framework is in an early stage of development it intends to present existing customers with performance criteria for evaluating ASP offerings. Concludes that further empirical researc...

This research will examine the risks and issues facing Information Technology (IT) companies in fulfilling their obligations in an IT outsourcing contract, and how these can be managed to achieve the desired outcome for all parties. The focus is on the business processes an IT company needs to successfully deliver the services it has contracted to supply together with the risks and issues facing the outsourcing supply company in successfully implementing these processes.

Frameworks, Issues and Implications, 2004

In the last few years there has been much interest in the delivery of software-as-a-service. The concept of remote application outsourcing, or application service provision (ASP), has emerged as a solution aiming to offer organizations, mainly small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), access to key applications that were previously unaffordable. This chapter examines this model of software delivery, focusing on the potential risks that could be associated with it. The authors identify shared risks with traditional IS/IT outsourcing and proprietary risks of this model. The chapter concludes by giving a classification of these risks.

1998

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 2002

Application service providers (ASPs) offer multiple users a subscription-based access model via the Internet to centrally managed applications. The appeals of ASPs are the per-user-pricing models, one-to-many access possibilities to applications, IT expertise and capabilities, and value added management services. This paper argues that although the ASP model offers an electronic outsourcing solution, there are in fact many similarities with more traditional IT outsourcing. Using four case studies from exploratory research into ASPs, we illustrate the applicability of a little used contingency model from the research literature that combines resource dependency theory, resource-based theory, transaction cost theory and agency theory. From this, we develop six major propositions that customers should bear in mind when considering an ASP option. Similar to outsourcing services, ASP sourcing offers some interesting bene®ts, but equally entails a set of risks that practitioners should carefully evaluate when considering the`netsourced' ASP option. q

2000

This paper draws from an international research study on the strategic positioning of companies in the software and computing services industry (SCSI). It considers how outsourcing companies are extending their product and service offerings in vertical markets, and also considers a new outsourcing model in the form of Application Service Providers (ASPs). The paper concludes by demonstrating that the SCSI is becoming more complex and dynamic as partnerships between key players blur traditional business sector boundaries.

Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 2010

This chapter provides both practitioner and academic insights into outsourcing. It begins with a review of the literature and practice of outsourcing, followed by a retrospect of its developments since the 1960s, up to present-day emergent trends such as best/smart-sourcing, rural-sourcing and business application grids. Recent legal developments are highlighted, along with their corresponding impacts. Outsourcing decisions tend to focus solely on the short-term benefits of cost reduction and service level improvement and, hence, often lack strategic direction, thus indicating the need for strategic management frameworks in the decision process. This chapter introduces a generic framework for such decision-making and highlights other strategic frameworks developed by researchers. The chapter then concludes by summarizing suggested action points that enable both clients and service providers to best exploit the recent developments in outsourcing, in order to maintain the strategic ed...

Logistics Information Management, 2002

California Management Review, 1997