Technology

Application service provider abbreviated as ASP is a business that deals with supply or distribution of software services in the market for use by the customers across wide area network coverage (Weinewright, 2000). The distribution of software services is from central data center that is operated by specific machines. Software service provision offered by application service provider is also known as on-demand software.

The most important feature of ASP is the use of application programs such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) (Sharon, 2002). Companies outsource information technology to venture in commercial activities that leads to satisfaction of customers. The government and other non-profit making organization use ASP as a way of providing service to end users in an efficient way. The cost of specialized software is very high such that small and medium sized organizations cannot afford. These high costs and complexities associated with software application can be overcome by the use of ASP (Weinewright, 2000).

There are five subcategories of application service provider. These are
Local ASP that supplies a wide range of software application service for small organizations.

Vertical market ASP that provides application service to specific industry like education sector.

Enterprise ASP that helps to deliver business applications.

Volume business ASP that provides prepackaged application services in big volumes to both small and medium businesses.

Specialist ASP that provides application service to specific need for example Web site services.

ASP has some benefits to the customers or end users and also it has some disadvantages.

Advantages of ASP
Application service provider has led to reduction in information technology costs.
There is elimination of software integration on the side of the client.

The users of ASP are given the chance of exploiting many benefits of information technology through deployment of tools and staff that have a lot of knowledge about IT.

There is adequate supply of application service where the supplier or provider signs full time supply of the service to end users.

The cost of software application is spread over many clients so individual customer does not carry total burden of the cost alone (Bielski, 2002).

It is easy to keep ASP up to date, make the service easily available and experts can manage such services for better performance.

It is a way of making accessibility of products to be easy and technology experts are made to participate fully in provision of application services.

Vendors get a lot of experience about the application of these services than in-house staff.
ASP helps to promote the availability, reliability and security of internal information technology systems.

Disadvantages of ASP
It only benefits large businesses or organizations because it is only designed to customize solutions for software application. This causes inconvenience to a client who is forced to work with that kind of justification.

When ASP changes the availability of such services in the market is also affected making it difficult for clients to access such services (Sharon, 2002).

It is a way of limiting the chances of applying other forms of application service because the client is tied completely to the provider.

It is a problem to integrate ASP with non- ASP client systems.

Precautions taken to reduce risks of using ASP
Security of ASP is very important and to avoid losses associated with the application service provider, the user must ensure there are port or network service, ASP expert personnel and application vulnerability. The technical personnel to manage possible hardware and software failure as well as ensure protection against security violations should be readily available (Atcheley  Bennett, 2004).