The Concord is an ASP for high-speed European travel. No company could justify the cost of owning and operating a supersonic jet. The application code lives on the ASP's server, and it can only be modified by the ASP's technicians. When upgrades are released, users don't have to worry about downloading and installing anything from the software company. Their ASP simply upgrades the copy of the software that lives on its servers, and all subscribers access the new version through a web browser.
ASPs help customers get an application up and running in little time, for little money.
The customers are thus free to focus their time and resources on their core business concerns. ASPs can also help companies serve remote offices. Rather than set up the physical infrastructure needed to run applications at these offices, the parent company can arrange to deliver them much of the computing through ASPs. ASPs eliminate the IT headcount which tends to be very expensive and very specialized, also eliminateing the IT infrastructure for the application as well as supporting applications. Using an ASP allows the customer to convert a capitalized item to an expensed item and use more of the money and intellectual capital on its core business instead of trapping it in a non-core IT system.