Reliability - 99.999 percent or 100 percent availability

Scalability - automatic network load and application load balancing, capacity planning to ensure applications are available when needed

Data management - automated backup, storage management, data and disaster recovery

Online support and documentation

Performance - network tuning - application monitoring, operating system tuning

Rapid deployment and ease of new user additions

An acceptable price structure

Service level agreement (SLAs) covering service levels, speed and availability and problem resolution standards to ensure a mutually acceptable performance

The above requirements require certain trust and confidence in the model. However, as the ASP market remains immature, success stories are few and far between, and tend to involve the delivery of non-mission critical software.

Therefore, potential customers find difficulties in evaluating the model, inducing a lack of confidence and trust. Also, one of the factors negatively influencing the adoption of the ASP business model has been the reliability of the Internet.

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* Contributed by -
Varun Gupta,
B.E. (Electronics), Mumbai University,
MBA, ICFAI University, Hyderabad,
Currently working as Business Analyst with NSE.IT Ltd., Mumbai.