Traditionally, outsourcing has been IT oriented. Today, however, outsourcing is taking three different paths. I see outsourcing falling into three distinct categories: the traditional IT suppliers,† the application service providers (ASP), and the business process outsourcing (BPO) suppliers. Different currents are buffeting each sector. Historically, IBM, EDS and CSCformed the top tier of the IT [...]
Buyers are interested in transformation, says Joe Ragusa, vice president, Transformational Outsourcing for IBM Global Services, based in Somers, New York. They see outsourcing vendors as change agents who can provide the skills, processes and technology they need to enter the brave new economy. IT is enabling, adds Ragusa. The Web has created some strange bedfellows. Heated competitors are now working together in business-to-business (B2B) exchanges…
The trend to outsource non-core business processes is ‘irreversible,’ says John Barnsley, global leader for Business Process Outsourcing for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and is steadily moving to include multiple activities. Barnsley attributes an overall increase in acceptance of BPO as an important strategic tool to the rapid transformation in technology. Constant change, accelerated by the Internet, has altered companies’ risk equations.
Fortune 50 companies discovered ASPs last year. They signed large contracts proving the legitimacy of the model. Examples of major contracts include DaimlerChrysler and Nestle who signed contracts with Qwest Cyber.Solutions and Akzo-Nobel, who signed a contract with eLine. These contracts demonstrated the ASPs’ new approach to managing applications is attractive to large corporations as well as the small and medium market, which had been their main medium. The ASP solution is not just for startups and dotcoms, Pring says. (ASP, outsourcing)
How to Select an ASP Supplier… The path a buyer should take in selecting an ASP depends on the buyer’s intent for use of the outsourced application. Adam Braunstein, Senior Research Analyst with the Robert Frances Group, explains that the buyer could use an ASP to host a full-blown integrated application set, or it could use an ASP as an automation tool for a simple application that doesn’t need to pull information from external systems. Despite the intended use of the application, Braunstein, suggests there are crucial characteristics to seek in an ASP supplier.
HEALTHradius is an application service provider (ASP) for health care providers and public health agencies. The company’s application decreases the cost of health care data management for health plans and public health departments by managing their databases. For example, federal law requires health plans to submit a report measuring their immunization rates if they want to be reimbursed by Medicaid. They can get this information from us, says Gene Shook, vice president of operations and development for the Bellevue, Washington ASP.
In 1995 the stock market was beginning to take off. Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company, based in Baltimore, Maryland, wanted to introduce new products as quickly as possible to take advantage of the public’s growing excitement with insurance products tied to stocks.
The Internet is transforming outsourcing. And outsourcing is transforming the Internet. This interaction has produced new ways to outsource that were never possible before. Thanks to the Internet, there are new flavors of outsourcing that could not have been possible in an unconnected world. Look at the Application Service Provider (ASP) model. Today, companies have [...]
Today the company, now called Send.com, has 20 different product lines, ranging from cigars to cars. The company partners with local specialty retailers to fill its orders and deliver its gifts. Like a winemaker mixing a champagne cuvee, Send.com has merged e-commerce with old-fashioned retail…
IQ.com was the ASP that made that sweepstakes sparkle on the Net. Its pop up windows offer an outsourcing solution for any company marketing on the Web, through a wireless device or on interactive TV. The ASP’s goal is help its buyers capture, convert and retain their customers through e-marketing and customer loyalty campaigns.
Cost savings historically have been the biggest enticement to outsource. Vendors ran the numbers and showed their prospects the math: outsourcing could save them significant dollars. Today, cost savings have fallen to the bottom of the list of why companies outsource, according to Cynthia Doyle, an analyst with IDC……
The ASP market is the mouse that roared, says Art Williams, director, Giga Information Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although ASPs form a small percentage of the outsourcing market, they have attracted an enormous amount of industry attention. Currently the ASP model has the highest ratio of vendors to revenue in the outsourcing world.
GoCargo.com is an on-line exchange for ocean freight. The site works like most B2B exchanges; shippers post their ocean freight shipments on the site…
In 1993 MCI had a problem. It called Bob Stockard to solve it. Stockard and his wife Maria Massaro were running a successful executive search firm when MCI, a search client, approached them. The long distance carrier was looking for a temporary sales force to launch its new Friends and Family program. And, MCI needed its sales force now…
Application Service Providers (ASP) have much to offer companies in today’s connected, competitive world, according to Rita Terdiman, vice president and research director at the Gartner Group, a Stanford, Connecticut consulting firm. They level the playing field, allowing small and medium-sized companies to leap frog to Tier 1 applications, she points out. And multinational companies doing business globally benefit from the easy connectivity of the ASP solution.
Kärna LLC plans to change that. The San Francesco high tech start-up specializes in encoder precision. (An encoder is a device that measures movement.) Kärna, which means seed or core in Swedish, has targeted gamers as its initial market. Its team of developers is applying the company’s encoder precision technology to build a better mouse…
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