Hosting The E-Learning Party


With the economic downturn hitting IT particularly hard, it has become increasingly difficult to get enterprise-wide software strategies off the ground. When learning needs won’t wait, more and more companies are looking to quick-start ASP (application service provider) solutions, where e-learning content, services and management systems are externally hosted, easing the pressure on internal resources and capital budgets. In this chapter, I look at the potential of hosted solutions for training departments who want to get going with e-learning but don’t want to hold back on the risks and the headaches.

It’s got to be ASP

Times are tough for training managers looking to launch e-learning on a top-down basis, across their whole enterprise. Long-term strategic plans for e-learning are gathering dust as organisations cut back on capital spending and trim their IT budgets. It’s not that the plans no longer make sense, it’s just that they’re not making it to the top of the priority list, crowded out by what are seen as more mission-critical issues.

In the meantime, training needs continue to pile up and traditional methods cannot keep pace. Trainers know that e-learning – whether that’s self-paced learning, virtual classrooms or streaming media – can relieve the pressure and improve efficiencies; they just aren’t being given the chance to prove their point.

Trainers have two choices – either put e-learning on hold and wait for a more favourable climate, or take a look at new ways of getting e-learning going, which place less of a strain on internal resources. One way of achieving this is by applying the application service provider (ASP) model to the provision of e-learning content, services and management systems.

According to CompTIA, “An ASP provides applications – and all the IT infrastructure and support services necessary to deliver them – to customers on a subscription basis. ASPs typically host applications at a remote data centre and deliver them to customers via the Internet or a private network”. Using an ASP contrasts with the traditional solution, where applications are loaded on to an organisation’s own servers and maintained by the internal IT department. Research by CompTIA indicates that a sizeable proportion of organisations expect ASP services to allow them to adopt new applications they could not have previously cost-justified. When asked, 45% said “yes”, 40% said “no” and 15% did not know.

So what benefits can trainers expect from applying the ASP model to e-learning? And what benefits will they have to forego by allowing e-learning to go outside the firewall? Let’s find out.




E-Learning's Greatest Hits
E-learnings Greatest Hits
ISBN: 0954590406
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198

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