The value of an ASP lies in their ability to host the services and develop the applications, which would be particularly time-consuming and expensive for enterprises to deploy. This is the strength of the outsourcing model, allowing companies to focus on the services they do best, meeting tighter budget demands and limited resource availability. ASPs are breaking new ground through their business models and will change the way we do business on the Internet. While exciting, the ASP business model is young and challenging from a technical perspective because they must prove their value through the management of their IT infrastructure.
Competition is high and the margin for IT mistakes are low.
For customers, one security mistake could be disastrous. Ultimately, ASPs need to protect customer's valuable data that is in transit over open networks between servers, between enterprises and between clients and servers. And they need to know beyond a doubt who they are doing business with. ASPs must provide trust to their customers by ensuring that the person sitting on the other side of the Internet is who they say they are. Employee accessing confidential information is authorized to access restricted information.