SME IT Guide

November, 2000

ASP: a hot topic among SMEs

The trends, technology and offerings in the ASP (application service provider) market were discussed at the SME IT Forum - Empowering SMEs for Internet Economy last month.

Organised by Cisco Systems, Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and SME IT Guide, it attracted more than 400 SMEs. In spite of moving to a bigger venue within Mandarin Hotel, there was standing room only.

The programme centred round an overview of industry trends by Prof Robert Gay of the ASP Centre in the Nanyang Technological University, a look at the technology used to support the concept by Cisco's Business Development Manager Ho Siew Fay and the case for ASP services by three vendors.

Solomon Software's General Manager Laurent Dedenis spoke for the horizontal ASPs which offer one application - in his case, accounting software - across all industries. Karen Fukumura, co-founder and CEO of Etako gave the perspective of vertical ASPs which offer a suite of modules suited to a particular industry, in this case, the electronics industry. The last speaker, Mark Tjong , Senior Vice-President of justLogin.com represented the ASPs in the collaborative cluster with his company's office applications.

ASP was defined as an organisation which offers to deploy, host, manage and rent packaged, software-based services from a centrally managed facility via the Internet. The Asia Pacific ASP market is projected to generate revenues of US $700 million this year while the Asian market is forecast to reach US$5.5 billion by 2004.

According to guest of honour, Seah Lye Khim, Deputy Director, E-commerce of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, studies show companies could save 30 to 70 percent of the cost of ownership, depending on the application. She also quoted an ASP Consortium survey which showed that 90 percent of users were very satisfied with service levels.

The issue of security, which was a major concern of the audience, was dealt with by all the speakers. They highlighted the precautions taken. In addition, Prof Gay made the point that it was a question of trust, rather than security.