Nov 5th 1999: Citrix announced the first fourteen participants in its ASP programme and revealed the fruits of a technology alliance with Cisco aimed at improving application quality of service.

Timed to coincide with the ASP Summit conference in Denver CO, the announcement included three partners that launched publicly as ASPs for the first time this week. The show also saw ASP technology announcements from Packeteer and Solect.

Cisco announced a new technology called Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR), which Citrix will support in a forthcoming revision to its ICA protocol. Running on Cisco routers as part of the vendor's Internetwork Operating System (IOS), NBAR will allow network administrators and ASPs to classify and prioritise different types of ICA traffic, thus minimising application response times for users.

The fourteen i-Business ASP partners announced by Citrix all now enjoy the pay-as-you-go licensing terms of the vendor's iLicense scheme, under which they pay for ASP platform software such as MetaFrame according to usage rather than paying for the full licence upfront. The vendor has received applications from over seventy ASPs to join the scheme, iBusiness general manager Chris Phoenix told ASP News Review.

The Citrix list included some significant new names as well as ASPs more closely associated with Unix rather than the Windows environment.

MadisonApps.com is an ASP spin-off from established New York City-based Citrix partner Madison Technology. Active since the beginning of the year, the ASP unit will help independent software vendors deliver their applications as hosted solutions.

Tequinox is the global ASP arm of Brisbane, Australia-based software and IT services group Mincom. A fully-owned subsidiary, the unit previously operated as Mincom ITS, and claims an ASP track record dating back to 1979, when it first began offering bureau services to leading companies in the mining, utilities and transport industries.

TRW Systems and Information Technology Group is a top-10 global IT firm that has been running an ASP programme since January this year with its existing automotive industry, commercial and government clients. It is using Citrix technology to deliver Java client sessions across the Internet from an Oracle-based application suite.

Highly-regarded Sunnyvale CA-based startup Aristasoft, which formally launches next week, was also represented. Aristasoft uses Citrix to deliver JD Edwards applications.

The others on the list included established enterprise ASPs Carrera-Maximus, ESoft Global, Futurelink, Surebridge (formerly Panoptic), Telecomputing and Transchannel. Others included: i-NOC.com, a spin-off from Citrix reseller Soma Systems; VeriPoint, a subsidiary of distributor and IT services provider Jones Business Systems Inc (JBSI); and two companies addressing the volume small business and consumer markets, Imago ASP and LightPC.com.

Application performance management vendor Packeteer announced a policy-based subscriber management system that allows ASPs to tailor application performance to match individual subscriber requirements. The system allows ASPs to manage and monitor service levels within controlled portions of the delivery chain. ASPs Futurelink and ESoft Global are participating in trials of the technology. Cupertino CA-based Packeteer also announced agreements with a number of partner vendors to develop technology for ASPs, including Citrix, Infovista, Portal and Compaq, and an alliance with Hewlett-Packard.

IP-based billing and subscriber management vendor Solect Technology Group announced a new version of its IAF Horizon software designed for application hosting. Existing users of the ASP package include GTE, BT, Tele Danmark, and Puerto Rico Telephone, said the Toronto, Canada-based company.