Prize-winning ASP quits ASP business

NEWS Award-winning ASP Vistorm has abandoned the conventional hosting business and is now persuading large corporate customers to set up miniature ASPs internally. David Angwin, director of marketing at Vistorm, said: "The ASP market is just not growing at the speed predicted. "Lots of companies want the benefits that an ASP can bring but when it came to handing their data over to someone else they just weren't prepared to do it," he added. Vistorm decided the solution was to get customers to set up an ASP in-house, using its Via Vistorm platform. This has many of the advantages of a traditional ASP, the company claims, such as instant software updating and lower support costs. However, it takes away the risk of handing essential company data to an unknown company that has only been in business for a few years. It's difficult to tell how an in-house ASP is really different to running an in-house thin client architecture, but Angwin claims that the company has already signed deals with several large companies. As eSoft, Vistorm was named ASP of the Year 2000 by the ASP industry association, and Best Worldwide ASP in the World Communications Awards 2000. Nonetheless, the company had only sold 1,000 seats by the time it gave up on the ASP model.