They harness the power of the Internet to supply companies with applications for each employee s desktop computer, laptop, personal digital assistant, or mobile phone. The ASP maintains the hardware needed to host complex applications, dramatically reducing the cost of buying, maintaining, and upgrading an information technology system. Access to e-mail, which is used by outsourced applications to deliver reports, documents, etc. A firewall to ensure security during transmission. High speed connections using a virtual private network, for example.
Cost savings can range from thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The cost of an ASP usually includes an initial setup fee plus a monthly rental fee per user. ASP Success Depends on Bandwidth Businesses won t tolerate wasting valuable minutes waiting to access a spreadsheet application. So the success of ASPs assumes high-speed Internet access, something that isn t a given today. But in another three to five years the ASP concept will be ready to take off as faster Internet access and more reliable connections become commonplace.