It requires careful segmentation, localisation and diversification of sales channels through the use of branded retailers and specialist sectoral providers on a fully scalable basis. Key vertical markets for an ASP operation to pursue within this area include travel , transport and logistics , manufacturing and distribution , financial services , specialist high-tech, entertainment, information and education, communications and health. Whichever approach they select, ISPs must consider their application service portfolio as an evolving entity. The ultimate objective should be that of developing the necessary organisational skills and knowledge of customer requirements, in order to continuously deepen their overall market penetration. ISPs seeking to become ASPs must learn to understand these and exploit knowledge about the customer s business processes at every opportunity in order to refine their service offerings.
Partnerships are already a key part of the drive to build market share.
These are being established in response to the need to engage in risk sharing, to seed the market, to secure routes to market for the new services, to build trust with the end user, and, most importantly, to assemble new skill sets. Within the ASP market, offering complete solutions to customers will require skills that are naturally owned by a variety of players, and so a vital element of the race will be the swift assembly of the requisite competencies. A possible generic mapping for an ISP seeking to establish an ASP operation is shown in Figure 10. For those ISPs that are not likely to become large enough to compete effectively in the IP wholesale markets, the key to reaping the full benefit of the ASP model will be to retain control of the customer relationship and to avoid being demoted to the status of anonymous third-party wholesale network provider. In this situation, the ISP would control the customer relationship, branding the services of its partners as its own.