WHO WANTS TO BE AN ASP?

Everyone wants a piece of the hottest and most-hyped sector of communications. Telephony profiles some of the application-specific upstarts trying to make it big

Suddenly, anyone can be an application service provider. The concept went from obscurity to phenomenon practically overnight. And it's easy to be an ASP: There isn't even a screening process, a qualifying round or a fastest-finger question.

All that's required is some market intelligence and a unique approach to the ASP model - and these days that approach doesn't even have to resemble the traditional hosted-software slant.

The broad definition of the ASP concept means that hosted delivery of anything can make anyone an ASP. And those with entrepreneurial leanings are taking advantage of that looseness, applying the ASP model and label to just about every kind of communications service imaginable.

The unknown variable is how well an environment already littered with competitive service providers will accept the entrepreneurs' aggressive embrace of the ASP model. Projections vary, but in any emerging service market where competition is stiff, the lowest odds are always placed on the longest shots - and artificial lifelines are few and far between.

Cahners In-Stat Group, for example, recently released a study that suggests while many businesses are open to outsourcing applications, the majority of them are not going to turn to small, application-specific entities to do it but rather will look to more established providers with established brands and reputations.

To survive, the study says, the smaller hopefuls will have to partner with larger providers - to "phone a friend," so to speak - that are aggregating and managing multiple ASP approaches.

That kind of pragmatism isn't stopping a lot of upstarts from giving it a go, with or without the support of partners in more established positions. Driven by the assumption that its ASP plays are answering an unfulfilled application niche or simply unique approaches to everyday service delivery, company after company is calling itself an ASP.

Here, Telephony examines the strategies of several companies applying the ASP model. The subjects of the profiles that follow have differences that range from experience and size to service sector and funding formats, but they have at least one thing in common: They all want to be ASPs.