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Page 60 GO IT ALONE!
Rick Mosenkis, the CEO and cofounder of Trichys, which operates WorkZone (www.Trichys.com), explains how his company has embraced this defining criteria. “With WorkZone, our customers can establish extranets [shared secure “filing cabinets” on the Web that allow for collaboration] for their clients within 45 seconds. The most important feature of this ASP service is that it is easy for everyone to use.” He adds that “Customers want an intuitive way to solve their problems. Today, when you make a phone call you don’t think of all the technology involved. Our focus is for users to have a similar experience with WorkZone. So, our service must be simple to use and our powerful technology must be invisible.” Second, ASPs are a shared-cost model. The service is developed once, then can be shared by thousands of users, so the costs are inherently low. To the user, the cost savings from relying on an ASP are similar to those from traveling as one of many airline passengers instead of chartering a private jet for personal use. There is an additional, growing benefit here: the extraordinary ability for users to now customize most ASPs to meet their specific needs, which is discussed later in this chapter. To turn the earlier analogy on its head, customization allows the user to fly his or her own private jet—at a coach fare. Third, the software for ASPs is run at a central location, typically the home office. As a consequence, ASP developers can continuously upgrade the product. Each upgrade is instantly available to every user who logs onto the service via the Internet. Moreover, in response to competitive pressures, most ASPs take advantage of this low-upgrade distribution cost, allowing them to be continuously improved. It’s not unusual to subscribe to an ASP at one price and then discover, a few months later, that for the same price the value of the service, as measured by its features, has literally doubled!
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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