ASP News Briefs - November 24, 2000

• What Your Customers Want
• The Envelope Please
• See Them Run

by Gerry Blackwell

What Your Customers Want
If you operate an ASP or wannabe, check out the new guidelines for ASP service level agreements published recently by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA).

The ITAA, an industry association for corporate IT organizations, provides its 400 direct and 26,000 affiliate members with public policy recommendations, business networking and industry leadership.

The group recently developed guidelines for ASPs that will help operators understand what customers might expect when they sit down to negotiate service level agreements.

The guidelines outline the minimum services the ITAA believes an ASP should provide customers. Harris N. Miller, ITAA president said the outline is intended to help ASPs understand buyers' needs.

"The new SLA guidelines are an important step in establishing best practices and standards for the emerging ASP industry," Miller said.

"Before ITAA offered guidance to the buyer community, we needed to look at what the vendor should and should not offer in its SLA, and how the ASP can best service potential customers," Miller added.

The guidelines were developed for the ITAA's Standards & Best Practices subcommittee and the law firm of McKenna & Cuneo.

Attorney John Bonello of McKenna & Cuneo said as "ASPs begin marketing initiatives around their SLAs, the ITAA's timely guidelines provide a framework upon which they can craft their SLAs and potential customers can evaluate ASP offerings."

The ITAA Web site also contains general information on SLAs and other resources available to all visitors, plus an SLA library available only to ITAA members.

The Envelope Please
What kind of industry would it be without awards? The ASP Consortium recently filled in a blank when it distributed the first annual ASPire Awards at a gala ceremony at Comdex Fall 2000 in Las Vegas.

The awards were for industry best practices in four areas: delivery, integration, management and operations, and enablement.

Members of the Consortium's Best Practices Committee, working in separate teams for each category, selected five finalists in each. The four winners were selected by an independent review board of respected ASP experts from outside the Consortium.

And the winners are...

Verso Technologies Inc. was recognized for providing an online auction marketplace with a CRM solution it delivered in 30 days. The solution provided a Web-centric customer service environment, a central repository of customer data and real-time customer interaction.

ISV eTopware Inc. took top honors for providing its Business Process Management application platform to PROSA, a major Mexican financial institution. It helped dramatically improve the customer's onerous credit card charge-back process and enhance its top- and bottom-line performance.

Resonate Inc., an Internet services management software developer, won in the category of Management & Operations for deploying an integrated software solution to Interpath, a full-service ASP. The solution helped Interpath meet a host of needs for the operation of its data center.

And LearningStation.com, an educational ASP, was honored for helping the Low Country Day School in Pawley's Island SC set up an Internet-based LAN and then delivering educational software for less than the licensing costs of the packages.

"For some time now, we in the ASP industry have recognized this model as something that is changing the world of computing," Consortium chair Traver Gruen-Kennedy of Citrix Systems told attendees. "Tonight we are able to proudly tell the world about a group of practitioners that are leading the way in the delivery of ASP services."

"These are real customer success stories that will help define the ASP value proposition and provide customer testimonials to the benefits of ASPs," Gruen-Kennedy added.

Judge for yourself by reviewing the case study abstracts of each of the 20 ASPire Awards finalists at the Consortium's Web site.

See Them Run
CmeRun Corp. of Hudson MA, the business-to-consumer ASP aggregator we wrote about a few months back, has been busy recently adding to its portfolio of software offerings. CMeRun distributes its consumer software rental service through ISPs.

In October, the company announced an alliance with Dallas-based Zane Interactive Publishing Inc. under which it was to add over 200 education and special interest programs.

The Zane products are aimed at school children and adults and cover Music & Art, Literature, Science, Social Studies, Reference and Special Interest. Titles include a line of Merriam-Webster reference products.

"cMeRun will give Zane's comprehensive library of interactive educational and reference content exposure to an untapped market," said the company's Nick Tee. "Of the emerging business-to-individual ASPs, cMeRun clearly had the most expertise."

In November, cMeRun announced a similar deal with Individual Software of Pleasanton, CA. Individual has a line of productivity, training and e-learning software.

CMeRun has licensed 12 of its titles, ranging from tutorials on Microsoft Office, to time organization and resume creation, to family tree building.

"Unlike niche players that focus primarily on one area, we can capitalize on our diverse software offerings to create more synergies like this for the end-user," said Warren Talbot, vice president of business development for cMeRun.

"Individual's software adds value to our existing offering. For example, 'Professor Teaches Microsoft Office 2000 Plus' from Individual is a great accompaniment to packages like Microsoft Office."

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