May 27th 2000: Anyone from an ISP to a VAR can become an ASP these days, thanks to a growing range of packaged ASP hosting and provisioning platforms from various suppliers.

Just as ASPs are renowned for reducing complex enterprise applications down to cookie-cutter implementations, so these suppliers have done the same with the very essence of becoming an ASP. Some target would-be ASPs, while others are designed to help existing ASPs become slicker, more efficient providers. But as with all templated solutions, prospective buyers should make sure they understand the compromises involved in going with these packaged solutions.

All revolve around software and services that automate the process of being an ASP. "It's a key enabler without which any of these industries can grow with profit," according to Vikram Mehta, VP marketing at Ensim, which launched its full solution this week (see internetnews.com story, Ensim Prepares for Big Announcements at ASPCON, 22nd May 2000).

A number of basic functions are standard offerings in all of the packages, while some add extra capabilities (see table at end of article).

Most vendors are aiming to sell their wares to would-be ASPs among ISPs and VARs.

"It's an easy transition for ISPs. That's where we're focussing at the moment," says Nevo Hadas, VP strategic partnerships at Systemsfusion. "For ISPs from the access bandwidth provider market, offering value-add applications really makes a lot of sense."

The choices available in the market begin with entry-level offerings such as the new VAR scheme unveiled this week by online store creation and hosting vendor Netopia. Although limited to Netopia's own applications, the introduction of the scheme acknowledges the importance of involving VARs in the sales process, even for relatively low-cost, high-volume packages (see internetnews.com story Netopia Launches ASP Partner Program for VARs, 22nd May 2000).

But most would-be ASPs are looking for more control over their portfolio. Here the choice is among vendors such as Ensim, Systemsfusion and Sphera, which launched its latest platform in April (see internetnews.com story, Sphera Announces HostingDirector 2.0, 18th Apr 2000).

Systemsfusion, one of the first to enter the market, has been evolving its platform - appropriately called Evolutionware - to embrace increasingly broad capabilities. "It's like Lego, having a big green base that you can build on. The same solution we used to automate Web servers, we can now do it on a Citrix server," said Hadas.

The platform started out last year with a core set of Website hosting and email applications, added intranet, ecommerce and messaging applications in March, and last week (May 15th) introduced support for Citrix Metaframe, bringing a wide range of Windows-based enterprise applications within its ambit. (See also ISP-Planet article, ISP to ASP: One Easy Way to Go, 17th May 2000).

The Citrix connection will increase Systemsfusion's appeal to established ASPs and others coming into the business from a systems integrator background. So far, automated provisioning has been less of a worry for these providers than simply getting customers signed up. But as takeup begins to ramp, they are beginning to understand the benefits of automation.

"A good prospect for us is someone who has been doing application hosting for some while and has an understanding of how very complex it is," according to Greg Kee, VP marketing at Xevo, whose provisioning platform targets high-volume enterprise ASPs (see ASPnews.com story, Xevo ships ASP platform, 2nd May 2000)

Vendors with more of a grounding in the ISP market stress the value of enabling customer self-service as part of the automation process. "Apps on tap is a great idea. The only problem is you have to turn the tap on several days before you can use the application," comments Mehta. Ensim this week announced enterprise ASP Aristasoft as one of its reference customers.

To be able to select the right platform, providers must have a clear idea of where they want to end up in the ASP business. Those who aim to grow fast and support thousands of users should look at the high-end platforms. Each vendor has their own strengths in areas such as support for a reseller channel, or self-service provision and self-management by users.

The other criterion to bear in mind is the extent to which vendors tie providers to their specific platform. Since there are currently no common standards for provisioning hosted applications, each vendor operates their own proprietary environment. Although most are either publishing or licensing the interface specifications, the willingness of application providers to support each platform may limit choices in the future.

Xevo has currently announced Onyx and Great Plains as supported vendors, and is believed to be developing a relationship with Microsoft as an application provider. Systemsfusion has lined up Planet Intra, Kurant and CoreByte as participants in EDeN, its network for distributing hosted applications, and also supports a wide range of other applications that run on its servers. Ensim offers ISVs free access to �wrappers� that enable their applications to run on its platform, although there is a development cost involved in marrying the app to its wrapper.

For every one of these vendors, building the broadest application base is one of the main keys to their long-term success. But despite the speed at which the market is developing, it is still far too early in the race to assess who the ultimate winners are likely to be - and there may yet be some who won�t last the distance.

"At this stage, everybody's in a sprint, which may be foolish. This is probably a marathon," comments Systemsfusion�s Hadas.

Provisioning platform features

• Basic features
• Packaging - A facility that allows the provider to decide what applications and options to offer customers, and to set up pricing for the various options
• Provisioning - Automating the process of making applications available to customers in response to orders
• Metering - measuring various usage statistics that relate to billing and quality of service
• Subscriber admin - Setting up and changing individual user details
• Additional capabilities
• Pre-provisioned apps - A core set of applications already set up to use with the platform, and in some cases instantly available as hosted services from the supplier
• Scale - Support for multiple server farms, high-volume billing requirements and complex application integration
• Delegated admin - Giving resellers and customer administrators self-service access to certain functions
• Virtual server capability - The ability to treat a server or a rack of servers as a single consolidated resource, where the provider can deploy multiple customer implementations