What makes a good host

All ASPs are not equal, so trainers need to take some care in selecting a suitable supplier. Top of the list is making sure that the application provided – whether that’s an LMS, authoring tool, streaming media service, e-learning content or virtual classroom – meets your needs in terms of cost and performance. Next, with major consolidation taking place in the e-learning marketplace, you’ll want to make sure that your ASP has a sound financial position and is likely to be around long enough to deliver (although its much easier to change an ASP than a provider who is installing inside the firewall).

You’ll also need to be sure that the ASP can deliver high performance, using the best hosting services available, that is scalable to meet your growing needs. Performance needs to be delivered alongside the highest levels of security and top-level customer service. To ensure you get what you need, you’ll almost definitely want to negotiate a service level agreement (SLA) which is quite specific in terms of the quality of service to be provided.

Clearly expectations are being met. A recent study measuring usage of ASPs in general, has identified that internal IT staff within larger organisations show a high propensity to consider renting desktop applications from ASPs, enabling them to confine their activities to developing core systems of strategic importance to the business. The computer and high technology businesses (20%) are proving to be the greatest users of ASP services, followed by retail organizations (16%) and the public sector (12%).

Sheila McGovern, an e-learning senior research analyst at IDC, a division of International Data Group, believes that it is the high cost of becoming involved in e-learning in-house that is making e-learning ASPs so popular. “E-learning is actually not so different to other types of IT solutions. The key driver to adopting the ASP model for e-learning is cost savings in the short term – because doing it in-house involves a big initial outlay.” Implications for the market are not trivial as IDC predicts spending on ASP services to soar to nearly $8 billion by 2004, up from $296 million in 1999.

Early reactions to the ASP model muted, as IT departments questioned the risks involved in extending responsibility for business applications beyond the firewall. Cynics may have questioned whether they saw ASP as a way of diminishing their power and responsibility, the thin end of the outsourcing wedge. However, as Whittle happily reports: “The issues are simply not getting raised anymore. Our customers want ASP solutions, particularly the first time users. It seems the emotion is out of ASP now.”