Meta Group analyst Dean Davison offered a more favorable viewpoint. J.D. Edwards simply realized, he said, that the business of being a service provider is much different from that of being a software maker. Giving hosting back to its ASP partners is a slight shift in its strategy, he said. On top of linking up with ASP partners, Oracle, SAP and PeopleSoft also have launched their own, separate divisions to directly host and maintain their software for customers. The ASP model has become an attractive alternative for companies that want to use complex and expensive enterprise-level software without the pain and cost of maintaining and installing it themselves.
ASPs provide remote access to the software, typically for the price of a monthly subscription.
There are still more ASP vendors than there are clients of those vendors, but that's changing. J.D. Edwards' ASP strategy now relies heavily on ongoing expansion of its partner channels, Chayet said. The company is seeking additional ASP partners within targeted markets, he added. J.D. Edwards launched JDe.sourcing a year ago, but even before that, the company had been offering hosting services to its customers through partners including Electronic Data Systems Taiwan and IBM Global Services. Inc. All rights reserved.