An Indian IT services company, which has done extensive research into the global ASP roadmap is Corpserve. Headed by finance veteran Rajeev Mehrotra, MD and CEO and Prem Bajaj, COO, Corpserve was formed in April 2000. The business vision--to deliver ASP services first to the Indian markets and then scale globally. Both Rajeev and Prem have had extensive experience in the outsourcing business for the financial community segments prior to forming Corpserve, and both are well versed with the pitfalls of outsourcing and demanding levels of customer management.
For them ASP is a technology extension of their core competence. While Corpserve was created to become an ASP player, Rajeev has not rushed hastily into this business. The company has spent considerable time studying the strategies of the global players and the ups and downs of the ASP market. They have also used consulting firms to sound out their gameplan. Rajeev is therefore is well endowed to speak on the dynamics of the ASP business.
In an extensive discussion with Arun Shankar, Executive Editor, Jasubhai Digital Media, they cover the changing nature of the business model, the role of the team players, the applications, the customer view-point, the lackadaisical attitude of ISVs and the future of this very dynamic IT service.
Some years back, a very popular buzzword was outsourcing and was coupled with downsizing of the IT department in enterprises. How far away from this approach is the ASP model?
The business remains outsourcing. The mindset is whether outsourced or not. ASP is just the technology vehicle. There is an overlap between the two models of business process outsourcing and ASP. We are basically talking of a BPO model in an ASP environment.
The ASP business model has remained a hot subject even through the dotcom meltdown over the last twelve to eighteen months. But we still don't see any big players even on the global scenes. What is the reason for this?
Twelve months ago when we started thinking and working on our ASP business there was not a single article and not a single company talking about it--that was the dotcom era. Now the survival kit for the big boys is ASP. Everyone is an ASP [laughs].
"The concept is one-to-many--it is so beautiful that the model has to work. There is no way this business model cannot work." Looking back into this span of time, there are very few success stories. Out of thousands of ASPs today, only a handful are actually doing okay. What has happened is the whole thought process has been evolving and everyone is learning. Not only ASPs, any new business model takes a decade to stabilise. In the first phase ASP companies with limited resources chose to acquire first datacenter, then networking companies followed by system integration companies. They also invested in a few applications as well as the application code for customising it for niche segments and standardising it for markets in general. These early ASP companies invested huge amounts, which is actually not required in the service industry.
Contents
The ASP business model | |
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The evolving ASP models | |
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Customer/vendor relationship | |
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