www.aspnews.com/news/alliances/article.php/375601
By Phil Wainewright December 16, 1999 Agillion led ten other high-profile startups in a new group to champion Internet-based business services this week. Shunning the ASP acronym because of its links with what they view as an outmoded application outsourcing model, the eleven have named the group the Internet Business Services Initiative. Its purpose is to foster joint marketing and cross-integration of its members' offerings. HR service provider Employease and e-procurement operator works.com joined with customer relationship and collaboration startup Agillion to found the group, recruiting a roll-call of similar pioneers for the launch. They are all new ventures who have built automated business services from the ground up for delivery across the Internet to small and medium size enterprises. The group's first mission will be to raise customer awareness of the benefits of the Internet-centric service delivery model. "We need to work together to grow a larger market so we can all prosper," explained Agillion's director of business development Tom Hochstatter, speaking to ASP News Review yesterday. "People just don't know what is available, or their ability to access what is available." The group differentiates itself from ASPs, arguing that the ASP model is typically associated with high fees, complex customisation and training requirements, along with existing software products that have not been designed for Internet deployment. "What ISPs did for the Internet, ASPs are doing for applications," said Doug Sallen, senior VP at On The Go Software, another member of the new group. "They're providing the plumbing that allows customers to have applications - and they're going to have the same wild success that ISPs have had. But they're just plumbing guys." The group argues that their model is the only way to exploit the true potential of the Internet to deliver cost-effective process automation and other services to smaller businesses. "The real promise of the web is with applications that are written in HTML and Javascript and allow you to use all the scalability and power of the Web but not in the old outsourced fashion," said Sallen. No formal charge is being levied for membership of the group, whose main purpose will be to co-ordinate marketing messages and moves towards integration. A first meeting is planned for January. Together with On The Go, which operates the Expensable.com expense management service, the other members are online accounting service NetLedger, business admin service providers eAlity.com and Timebills.com, Jini-based ERP vendor BizTone.com, email provider USA.NET, and two as-yet unlaunched online book-keeping startups, BizFinity and Virtual Growth. Others were still finalising their membership at the time the press release was issued on Monday (Dec 13th), while ten more had already got in touch after it went out, said Hochstatter. "I would say the traction is going to be significant - there might be thousands of these companies out there," he said. |