I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
IBM gets serious about the Application Service Provider (ASP) Model.
IBM doubles down on software services
IBM have realized that they have to scale down to SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) and that means hosted services.
ASP must be inevitable - but had almost gone unfashionable due to the early failures of 2000-2002. But really those early attempts were just Facilities Management. I mean email over Citrix, who’d want that.
I think real ASP looks like this …
- True multi-tennanted applications
- All delivered over Port 80
- Trending to zero marginal cost for a new customer
- 100% Web based provisioning and management
Outlook 2003 with RPC over HTTP connectivity to Exchange is, I think, the first real horizontal ASP’able solution. You have all the benefits of a full mail client without caring where the mail server is.
For more vertical applications, building personalization and customization into component object models (as in ASP.Net 2.0) will be key building blocks for a new set of services.
ASP will arrive, and maybe IBM’s announcement will accelerate things. If ASP as a commecial model does arrive in the next 3-5 years then ASP.Net 2.0 and a healthy industry in 3rd party controls will be a key technology for delivery.
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