When to Choose an ASP?

Application Service Providers (ASPs) give consumers an unparalleled level of service and support for externally hosted back-end applications. They differ from conventional hosting firms since they specialize in electronic distribution of mission-critical business applications.

Their popularity is currently on the rise since corporate managers worldwide appreciate the cost savings they generate. Why spend the time and money involved in purchasing and installing an application you know you'll outgrow in six to 12 months when you can rent it?

Thus, instead of expanding information technology (IT) divisions to build and maintain new business systems, many corporations now entirely outsource their new application requirements to ASPs. These providers bear the burden of building, implementing and distributing customized applications, mainly databases, to internal and external corporate audiences.

ASPs also differ from conventional Web hosting outfits since they develop their own integrated, proprietary platforms. The professional solutions they provide are not a hodge-podge of assorted Internet services and protocols. They are a highly developed, bundled toolkit of services that are backed up by the broadest bandwidth and customer care systems available.

ASPs are thus the creme de la creme of hosting operations. They employ professional staff to develop state-of-the-art software and networking facilities. Usually ASPs are publicly-traded or backed with extensive amounts of venture capital. For these reasons, employing their services is quite expensive. Most ASPs charge their premier corporate clients US$10,000 minimum for hosting services. The cost for application development is usually determined on a per diem basis, but is usually as costly.

ASPs therefore cannot be recommended for the new or novice webmaster since the cost of use is generally too prohibitive. Application Service Providers are the most serious of Internet Presence Providers (IPPs), and should only be considered by very serious webmasters and online businesses who are generating significant revenue and who operate multiple sites.

ASPs are useful to such webmasters since many specialize in data warehousing. A data warehouse allows site operators to store text and graphics in database form. The text and graphics can be extracted and dynamically served as Web pages. Data warehouse applications are very impressive because they allow you to produce content on the fly. These applications can flag database information so that it only extracts certain data for certain Web sites. With such a system, you could dynamically generate twenty Web sites from one database.

Serving a site on the fly is an especially good option if your content is extensive. Most site design is based on a series of static Web pages. This situation gets problematic once the webmaster wants to update all the pages. In this case, the webmaster will have to open each page individually to insert an addition. This is troublesome if the site is over 100 pages and is inconceivable if the site is over 10,000 pages in size. With a dynamic database system, only one addition needs to be made to your Web site template and the change becomes universal. ASPs are thus quite popular because they entirely automate your content management.

For this reason, ASPs should be given serious consideration if you're a successful webmaster looking to migrate your series of sites to a cost-efficient hosting platform.