There are application providers that are getting into networking, networking providers that are branching out into hosting, and plenty of providers that don't know exactly what it is they do but are anxious to categorize themselves as ASPs. An ASP could be defined based on where on the service provision continuum it sits. This would encompass all of a customer's applications, the hosting environment to run them, the processes to manage them, the networking infrastructure to deliver them and the ongoing support to keep applications running at a better than adequate level. Instead, there are a legion of ASPs with similar mission statements and general offerings. At this point, we have concluded that the real variable in all of this is the service level a provider can guarantee.
Service can encompass anything that the customer values.
If that is a combined solution that includes everything from soup to nuts, then that is what the successful service provider is going to have to offer. What's left is service. Service is both hard to provide and significantly valuable to the customer. Look at automobile dealerships as a parallel example. You could buy a particular model of automobile from any number of car dealerships.