Launched just under a year ago, the ASP Industry Consortium yesterday announced it has already far surpassed membership goals.
Working with the 25 founding members in May 1999, the ASP Industry Consortium
hit 100 members in less than three months, doubled that figure by early November 1999 and added its 400th member last week.
Traver Gruen-Kennedy, chairman of the Consortium, told ASP-News, “Originally, we hoped to reach 100 members in our first year,” adding that the Consortium still has a lot more to do.
The Consortium just finished “The Market Readiness of ASP in Europe” report and has three more studies underway.
The Consortium is focusing on creating committees across regions and around individual countries. “We have 150 companies in Japan alone that have joined the local Consortium,” Gruen-Kennedy said.
The ASP industry continues to grow on a national and international scale, putting less of an emphasis on the ASP Industry Consortium to serve as the unified voice for the industry on a worldwide basis. “We are trying to map cyberspace to the global geography,” he said. “It is a big challenge, but it will create quite a big success for the ASP industry and the business in general.”
According to Gruen-Kennedy, the areas most active in the ASP arena are North America, Europe, Australia, Singapore and Tokyo. “While ASP is a cost-effective method to bring computing to everyone, there is still work to be done in solving the digital divide,” he said.
Gruen-Kennedy hopes its global organization will produce a standard contract to bring a level uniformity to play. “This is an industry that will be built on service agreements,” he said.
Another important issue for the Consortium is how it can bring services to end user organizations like schools. Gruen-Kennedy explained that many of the ASP-related trade shows have been vendor focused, but feels it is time to turn the focus to the end user and the value ASP can bring the end users.
The Consortium holds its board member elections in May.
