ASP vendor/customer relationship
In a nutshell what is your opinion on the commercial feasibility of enterprise wide applications through an ASP delivery model?
Mission critical, sensitive applications, which truly have a market and make sense commercially for an ASP cannot be delivered right away.
Let's look at the infrastructure required for an ASP delivery model. A key component is the data center and a key issue is the lack of response time or latency, due to last mile congestion. Will deployment of the ASP application backend on multiple data centres take care of this requirement for some time?
Latency is something than can be solved technologically very easily. Using geographically distributed data centres to provide faster access for the customer is one way of looking at the entire solution. But you can still have one data centre serving the entire world. The customer will not even know where your data centre is provided it has a pipe and uptime suitable for that application. What is important are the pipes behind the ASP solution, the technology and the security mechanisms. The customer wants his SLA to be very clean. When he clicks on an icon he gets the application seamlessly and in real time. He doesn't care whether it's a Sun or NT box sitting in multiple data centres. Secondly the last mile is still left out.
Assuming that the last mile problem, which brings in unreliability of response time is going to continue, how do you extend an SLA to the customer covering access to the ASP application portfolio?
Till we take care of the bandwidth situation and the networks are well settled, the internet is a most unreliable cloud. I have said the internet is not a secure medium. An SLA for a customer coming from the internet is the most difficult task. He brings a lot of dirt into the system. Even a small payroll application is very sensitive to the company.
If I have to give an SLA to my customer I need to have an SLA behind my back. Each partner has to give me an SLA, which I have to put in my SLA for the customer. I own the customer. The catch is how do I own the product without actually owning it.
At the end of the road, after all the dust has settled, what is the relationship that an ASP vendor will have with the customer?
In a mature ASP life cycle, an enterprise will not have many service providers. They will have one or two service providers. They will have one pipe and one service provider and their expectations from that service provider will go up everyday. It is for the service provider to keep abreast with the latest technologies and requirements of the customer. Otherwise they will lose the customer.
An individual or a company do not use multiple banks. They are very happy with one bank. The same thing is going to happen with ASPs. The service provider will be one. In a real mature cycle--each of the employees is also my customer. So I have to meet all the needs of the individual employees otherwise I will be out.
