Analyzing Application Service Providers

The pragmatic analysis of ASP phenomenon and up-to-the-minute decision-making guide for ASP entrepreneurs, leaders, and customers. ASP business models, designs, architectures, methodologies, enabling technologies, economics, and more. The ASP revolution is on the way. Now, there's a complete guide to profiting from it. In Analyzing Application Service Providers, one of the ASP marketplace's most experienced consultants presents a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the ASP marketplace. Alexander L. Factor covers everything entrepreneurs and service providers need to know to build successful ASPs and offers invaluable insights for enterprises seeking to use ASP services for competitive advantage. Factor presents a complete analytical framework for ASPs and their customers, encompassing customer value propositions, the economics of the ASP model, ASP service definitions and descriptions, key ASP technologies and architectures, guidance on ASP investment decision-making, and more. He concludes with a detailed review of the ASP "ecosystem," and the evolving impact of ASPs on each participant in that ecosystem provider, supplier, and customer. SUN PROFESSIONAL SERVICES CHAPTER 1 The History and Evolution of Outsourcing and ASP introduces the ASP phenomenon, presents clear definitions, and introduces the challenges faced by today's service providers. CHAPTER 2 Why Companies Outsource explains why enterprises are increasingly finding compelling value in outsourcing. CHAPTER 3 Understanding ASP analyzes the ASP phenomenon: business drivers, technical enablers, and key barriers to success. CHAPTER 4 Taxonomy for ASP Economies reviews the economic factors that make ASPs so compelling -- and develops a comprehensive classification of ASP economies. CHAPTER 5 Network Computing and ASP Architectures presents a complete framework for architecting ASPs for maximum accessibility, reliability, availability, scalability, flexibility, security, and manageability. CHAPTER 6 ASP Types and Services introduces ASP data centers and offers up-to-date definitions of ASP types, their designs, and services offerings. CHAPTER 7 Managing ASPs reviews the key business and technical issues associated with day-to-day ASP management, including monitoring, operations, customer care, and service management. CHAPTER 8 ASP Security Services addresses every aspect of securing ASP applications, focusing especially on security architectures, policies, and management. CHAPTER 9 Strategic Analysis of ASP Types focuses on the value propositions, economies, and potential competitive advantages available to providers of co-location, managed hosting, application infrastructure, and to pure-play ASPs. CHAPTER 10 ASP Enabling: Requirements and Fulfillment identifies and reviews strategic ASP networking, platform, application, integration, and service management technologies. CHAPTER 11 The Future of ASP looks ahead, drawing upon the extraordinary knowledge Sun Microsystems has on ASP markets, technologies, and customers.Factor, Alexander is the author of 'Analyzing Application Service Providers' with ISBN 9780130894250 and ISBN 0130894257.