Business and Network Impacts of the ASP Model, by Gene Knauer

Security, availability, and help desk are among the top issues that can greatly affect the relative success of an application service provider (ASP) relationship with your clients. Besides assessing an ASP's knowledge of a particular application, security and bandwidth are the primary concerns from a network consultant's perspective, with good help desk support another key determinant of end user satisfaction. In this article, we will go over some of these key factors in qualifying ASPs and suggest ways that you can add value in advising your clients as they embark on ASP relationships. Today ASPs come in many varieties. Some host other software vendors' applications. Others host applications internally developed by client companies. Still others specialize in network management applications and add value by integrating them into a single user interface for clients, although the applications remain at the client's site. Yet the issues of security, availability, and end user support come up with all of these ASP arrangements. ASP Activity Heats Up Nearly every large technology company, including Cisco, Sun, and Microsoft, is involved to some extent in aggressive alliances and partnerships to support ASP business models serving an anticipated influx of customers. A prime clientele are small to mid-sized companies that want to cost-effectively outsource most if not all of their IT applications and infrastructure. Many dot com companies fall into this category. E-commerce applications, which are already externally hosted and require fast implementation and 24 x 7 availability, are great candidates for ASPs who can guarantee quality of service and stay abreast of technology trends. Larger companies are expected to move to the ASP model with many of their applications too, but are more cautious, given the operational magnitude of their core business applications. In 2000, small divisions and remote offices of the Fortune 1000 are expected to be the early adopters of ASP arrangements. Imran Bashir, managing partner at San Francisco-based international consulting firm USWeb/CKS, sees ASPs as merely the newest incarnation of the externally-hosted applications business that dates back to the early 1980s. "Instead of dedicated networks connecting clients to service bureaus as in the past model, we're using the Internet, and that poses both advantages as well as some challenges."

From the network consultant's perspective, here are key areas to focus on when assessing ASP relationships with your clientele: Ensure Security Security is both the primary concern and one of the main reasons customers look to outsource their applications to an ASP. "Most of our customers don't have the expertise to safeguard their systems or the applications expertise to maintain them," Bashir says. "But the customer has to be assured that we can provide a high degree of data security since even if their applications are running on VPNs, they are still traversing the Internet." ASPs use a number of ongoing technologies, including the newest forms of encryption, to secure client transactions. Many have partnerships with security consultants and product vendors. When evaluating an ASP, thoroughly research their experience with, approach to, and resources for ensuring data security. Some applications contain highly sensitive or classified information and your client may not feel comfortable having this reside on an external server, so be sensitive to these issues, even if the ASP's security arrangements check out. Ensure Bandwidth and Availability ASPs are charged with helping their customers solve business problems, and network consultants can help prioritize traffic flows, define network elements, and get a handle on traffic volume. Most of the large ASPs have very robust Internet connections, but even large ones like USWeb/CKS partner with providers Excite and Yahoo for certain applications requiring special support, such as three-dimensional imaging. High availability requirements are another key focus when evaluating an ASP. "High availability of critical systems doesn't happen by accident, but rather by design," says Imran Bashir. "Our dot com clients require 7 x 24 availability, and that requires platforms with different architectures than those built for companies supporting internal enterprise applications that can be down for a few hours overnight, if needed." Bandwidth and high availability in turn translate to costs and trade offs. As a network consultant, you can play an important role in defining a client's bandwidth and uptime needs in the requirements definition stage of working with an ASP. Ensure Service & Support How customers using ASP services handle their help desk varies, but managing user expectations for uptime, QoS, and online or call center help is a key piece of a successful ASP implementation. "Some clients use their existing help desks once the systems we've built go live, and in that case we make sure that the help desk is tied into the ASP data center," says Bashir. "Others, like dot com companies, don't have help desks so we tie in the call center piece with help desk functions and bring in a third party that specializes in these services." The help desk contacts USWeb/CKS for complex problems requiring troubleshooting and deals independently on basic questions users have, such as how to use certain browser or applications features. Network consultants can help clients define support terms with ASPs by getting clear service level agreements, based on server, application, and network performance. On behalf of your client, ask the ASP: Will end users and IT support staff get the phone and online help they require? How will these services be delivered and by whom? With all of the momentum building behind the ASP business model, it seems inevitable that the arrangement will thrive. And why not? Working with an ASP lets companies concentrate on doing what they do best — making money and serving customers — instead of tooling and retooling their IT infrastructure. End users will judge the services based on how easy and transparent the applications are to use. Network and IT staff will judge the relationships with ASPs based on many other factors, including those mentioned above. As for the cost/benefit? It's too early to clearly say that using an ASP is less expensive than doing it in-house, but at the very least it should enable companies to outsource a major source of headache, high-turnover, and ever-changing best-of-breed solutions. As a network consultant, approach ASPs with caution. None are making a profit yet, according to industry figures. The Giga Group predicts that many ASPs will wind up being acquired or merged with larger companies in the next few years, so who you work with today may wind up changing dramatically. In the meantime, the same criteria that you use to help your clients build and maintain robust, secure, scalable networks still apply when evaluating ASPs. Let your experience and well-honed instinct be your guide.

For more information on ASPs:
For ASP news, please visit...
http://www.aspnews.com/
For ASP conferences & events, please visit.. .
http://www.aspnews.com/Events.htm