Applications Service Providers - What Do They Do and How Does it Benefit You?
Applications Service Providers (ASPs) are firms that give computer based services to customers over a network, usually the Internet. Sometimes called “On Demand” service providers, their business model relies on the ability to sell their expertise in a particular area to a wide swathe of customers. Much the same way that most small businesses don’t keep an attorney on staff, or a risk assessment actuary, the argument for Application Service Providers is that most small businesses don’t need to keep dedicated teams of support staff around to do things like administer issue tracking servers or bug tracking databases, or that there are significant cost benefits to be had in migrating common business functions to a centralized location for administration.
After identifying a group of net workable computer driven services, such as issue tracking or hosted bug tracking, that are common to multiple businesses, an application service provider offers the chance to remove hardware, periodic hardware upgrades, specific staff needed to handle a given suite of software tools and the assorted logistics involved by paying them a small fee at a fixed interval. The business case is that the fee is usually less than the cost of what’s being replaced, and the staff are now freed to do other, more useful tasks.
One of the most common products offered by Application Service Providers is hosted bug tracking. Rather than maintain a local bug tracking database, and use the internet to input bug reports and use network tools to assign them to specific technologists to solve, hosted bug tracking takes the server and puts it with other servers who are all administered by a team of dedicated administrators.
In a real sense, this level of service abstraction is quite common; where companies used to have answering services, they now have automated voice mail systems. Most companies don’t try to maintain their own T1 or OC3 lines to retain access to the Internet. Instead, they pay for an Internet Service Provider to handle those details for them. Application Service Providers, especially those doing issues tracking, are offering the same level of resource abstraction.
The benefits of outsourcing applications are that the cost of specialized software has grown in conjunction with both its capabilities and complexity, even in issue tracking software packages. It also represents a change in business model for developers. You’re no longer developing a box that gets sold with a product in it, you’re developing a custom service for the purchases of your software; this can be seen as a way to compete on improved customer service (if you’re an ASP), or as a way to divide the costs of expensive software among multiple companies (from the customer perspective). Used properly, Application Service Providers can provide extensive benefits to businesses of all sizes, and the option should be looked at for a wide range of business functions.
For more information on Defect Tracking Tools, visit AdminiTrack.com. The leading authority on Issue Tracking Software.
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