Factors at work here are the need to trim costs, including those relating to the acquisition and retention of skilled personnel, and the possibility of company managers being able to concentrate on the enterprise's core business. The ASP vendor community is perhaps as diverse as the range of services it brings to market. However, the ASP need not actually own these two elements itself. ASPs can and do run their businesses using rented capacity on data center or backbone platforms operated by companies such as Exodus Communications Inc and PSInet. Pure play ASPs can be NSP customers.
Different ASPs bring different things to the e-business table.
Smaller entities may have more focused applications expertise, but lack the resources to supply industrial strength ASP solutions. The ASP community faces a number of major challenges. One has to do with the degree of customization and level of IT support required for particular clients, and the implications this has for the economics of the ASP model of sharing expertise between many clients. There's also an understandable reluctance by some enterprises to have third parties host sensitive customer, sales and financial applications and data. Again, other applications may just be too complex to benefit from the ASP treatment.