Why 'On-Demand' (ASP)?

In this rapidly evolving ‘Brave new world’ of interconnected web-services and modularized e-commerce business-processes we are all witnessing, the traditional choice: “buy, build or partner?” may be supplemented by yet another and maybe even more attractive possibility: “buy service from a service provider”. Using a ‘hosted application’ or ‘managed application’ combines certain attractive features of ‘buying’ and ‘partnering’ while minimizing such an important overall parameters of your business-decision as ‘time-to-market’ and ‘cost of ownership’.

Service provider is a ‘vendor’ in the sense that he is selling you the concrete capabilities of the system he has built as a commodity, but he is your ‘partner’ as well, because he is doing his best to support uninterrupted functioning of the complex hardware and software infrastructure involved. Also, the Service Provider is interested in continuing the development of additional capabilities of his product/service, so, by committing yourself to ongoing relationship with a service provider you always stay on the very frontier of innovation; this is too more of a ‘partner’ relationship, than a simple deal.

The costs and cost structure are always vitally important, however in nowadays the issue of timing may be even more important, especially if you are launching a new e-commerce business to fill an emerging market niche or are re-engineering business-processes in order to achieve a higher level of security and usability in your ongoing business.

Bottom line: ‘buying’ a complex solution always involves not only a high up-front investment, but the costs of deployment (hardware and qualified labor), support (labor and hardware maintenance costs) and security measures (may be comparable or even more than the first two) as well; ‘building’ a complete solution involves the cost of developer’s team possessing the knowledge of the concrete business-domain on top of all costs listed above. ‘On-Demand’/ASP model – is the future of ‘partner’ relationships between on-line businesses, it is cost-effective, speeds up your 'time-to-market' and keeps you on the very 'tip' of ongoing innovation, ahead of your competitors!