Frost & Sullivan, a marketing consulting company, today
released survey results that indicate growing awareness of the ASP model among small and medium-sized businesses across Europe.
The company questioned a sample of 150 predominantly IT
managers at companies with up to 250 employees, drawn from a range of vertical markets.
According to the study, overall awareness of the ASP value proposition in Europe is high with 74 percent of companies surveyed saying they were aware of the ASP principle and could supply an accurate definition of the term.
Front & Sullivan defines the term as follows:
An ASP manages and delivers application capabilities to multiple entities
from a data center across a wide area network (WAN) or the internet.
While
there are numerous companies that use ASPs to host their applications, the
Frost & Sullivan report defines an ASP as the entity that owns the customer
relationship.
According to the study, the two most commonly outsourced applications are accounting (19 percent)
and messaging (16 percent). The popularity of those two
applications can be attributed to their lack of integration requirements, according to Frost & Sullivan.
“It is clear that, while attitudes to the ASP model are not uniformly
positive, nonetheless, there are enough companies willing to evaluate the
concept for us to claim this as a positive statement about the future,” said John Gilsenan, research manager at Frost & Sullivan.
In terms of brand awareness, Oracle came out on top, followed by
IBM Global Services, Microsoft, BT Ignite and Telecomputing. The only pure ASP in the
top five suppliers was Telecomputing, pointing to a sign of weakness in ASP’s marketing clout, according to Frost & Sullivan.
While awareness of the ASP model runs at
high levels, acceptance of the model and uptake of services is still
quite low, according to Frost & Sullivan. Dissatisfaction tends
to revolve around the inefficiencies of the network rather than the ASP’s
inability to deliver what was promised.
“Customers have a tendency to blame their ASP for any problems related to
the networking infrastructure, even if it is not the ASP who deals with
this service aspect. The provisioning of adequate networking infrastructure
by the ASPs themselves is projected to be one of the most distinct
differentiators,” said Gilsenan.
Lower total cost of ownership metrics of ASPs isthe prime motivator for 63
percent of respondents’ decision to outsource, the report said. A total of 47 percent of
survey participants state the lack of in-house
expertise and the struggle to attract and retain a qualified workforce as
key factors behind the migration decision.
Security concerns top the list of factors discouraging customers from
outsourcing, capturing 66 percent of responses, followed by the
performance of outsourced applications (49 percent) and service and
support (42 percent), according the Frost & Sullivan.
The survey was conducted in ten European countries (the U.K.,
Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway).
