Survey: Executives More Open To ASPs Than IT Leaders

Application service providers (ASPs) and their partners need to be more aggressive in marketing themselves. According to Framingham, Mass.-based International Data Corp., information regarding ASPs is only trickling into the market, and ASPs have a lot of work ahead of them to educate potential users. ASPs provide outsourced IT services, products, and management. In addition to being low, knowledge of ASPs varies across IT professionals and corporate officer buyers. In recent IDC surveys, only 40% of IT professionals said they had at least heard the term ASP. This percentage rises to 50% among corporate executives. About 36% of corporate executives said they would consider using an ASP, compared with only 22% of IT professionals. Additionally, corporate executives indicated higher current use of ASPs for almost all application types. "Intuition favors business decision makers as ASP champions because they are generally more focused on time as a competitive factor and return on investment as a requirement," says Clare Gillan, group vice president of IDC's Applications and Information Access research. "The message for ASPs is to focus marketing and sales efforts on the corporate executive community to whom the ASP value propositions speaks most clearly, while including the IT professional who will most always influence the final decision."