Application service providers (ASPs)
Rob Simmons, chief executive of Surrey-based Monitor Media, explains how application service providers help small businesses to grow without huge IT investment.
Managing costs and staff efficiencies are two areas itemised by most business gurus as essential to get on top of from start-up. One way of keeping a lid on IT costs is using an application service provider (ASP) for essential software needs.
An ASP is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network, in most cases, the internet.
The need for ASPs has evolved from the increasing costs of specialised business software that has far exceeded the reach of small-to-medium sized businesses. The growing complexity of software has led to huge costs in distributing and configuring the software for end-users, not to mention the ongoing cost of upgrades and fixes.
Through ASPs the complexities and costs of this software can be reduced and the issues of software upgrades are eliminated by placing the onus on the ASP to maintain up-to-date services, technical support, physical and electronic security and in-built support for business continuity and flexible working.
Our company, Monitor Media, is a digital agency and we had a need for a cross-platform office management system to 'glue' the company together. As there wasn't anything commercially available that gave us the tools we needed, we asked our in-house staff to build our own, TOMMIE.
Over the past five years, it has evolved into a integrated suite of office management tools for people to arrange meetings, share contacts, book holidays, do timesheets and expenses and so on, from within the office or away from it.
Most ASPs have inherent advantages for young companies. Key software is kept up to date and available by experts on dedicated servers, freeing companies of IT investment and hassle, reducing internal IT costs to a predictable monthly fee and freeing IT staff and facilities to concentrate on core business activities.
Although ASPs can provide improvements in reliability, availability, scalability and security over equivalent internal IT systems, users need to make sure the ASP's service level agreement guarantees the necessary level of service.
Things like viruses, licensing, backups and security are all taken care of by the ASP. Sounds great. So why isn't all software run this way?
Well, a lot depends on the credibility of the ASP. Users rely on the ASP to provide a critical business function, and that requires reliance on what is often an unknown organisation. Also, changes in the ASP market may result in changes in the type or level of service available to clients. Although this, of course, can be said of any IT product.
But there are further possible limitations. ASPs, by their nature, can typically only be customised to a limited degree, so it may be that what starts as an ideal ASP solution may one day become obsolete as the company grows.
Data integrity and security are also key issues when considering an ASP application. Loss of control of corporate data and image and exposure of a to other ASP customers are all risks that need to be assessed in selecting an ASP application.
Also integration with the client's non-ASP systems can be problematic. A good ASP application should at least provide tools to allow data from other systems to be imported, and ideally provide a programming interface to allow other systems to 'talk' to the ASP application directly.
Many ASPs offer a free trial to allow potential customers to test the application's functionality, security, availability and support. Making good use of this trial period is vital as the chosen ASP application is likely to be used to fulfil one or more important business functions for an extended time and it is therefore vital to make the right decision.
www.tommie.co.uk
Why not sign up to our small business newsletter and learn more?
