With almost five years experience running a successful ASP in Norway and Sweden, TeleComputing Inc. (www.telecomputing.com) knows a little something about what's needed behind the scenes to securely and accurately provision and manage hosted applications.
In fact, the company got so many inquiries from telcos about licensing its TECOS OSS system for the telcos' own ASP offerings that TeleComputing figured there must be a larger business opportunity for it than hosting applications in the Nordic region.
As a result, TeleComputing has restructured and divided itself into two divisions: the Nordic ASP, and a global ASP-enablement group that offers full, private-label OSS solutions to service providers that want to get into the ASP business for themselves.
"We're a midsize company, so to brand as a horizontal [ASP] on a worldwide basis wouldn't work. But we have great technology and experience we can share," says Jason Donahue, TeleComputing's president and CEO. "Back office is 50 to 60 percent of the problem. It's the reason why so many ASPs are failing today, because they don't understand how important business process automation is."
Among other things, TeleComputing's TECOS system provides other service providers with web-based interfaces through which they can provision customers or allow for self-provisioning automatically.
"It's a smart-build approach to building out applications," says Donahue. TeleComputing can have TECOS deployed and operational in a matter of weeks, offering telcos a fast time to market with ASP offerings.
"TeleComputing's enabler services are important for this market because...[they] provide an additional [and possibly less costly] alternative to other telcos and NSPs looking to move into the ASP market," according to a Current Analysis Inc. (www.currentanalysis.com) report.
"TeleComputing is able to customize, brand and launch services for a client in three to 12 weeks, and at a cost from $100,000 to $300,000 and then follow-up with application services support on a wholesale basis."
And TeleComputing has close relationships with Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com), Citrix Systems (www.citrix.com) and Compaq (www.compaq.com), which its telco customers can leverage. Current Analysis believes one of TeleComputing's biggest strengths is that it has "one of the largest application portfolios in the industry," which includes horizontal applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Office, and more than 200 productivity, messaging, ERP, CRM, and e-business applications on top of customized solutions.
TeleComputing also hopes to help its customers get a leg up on competition with its Sales Jump Start Program, which consists of a private-label marketing program that includes sales training support, assistance with pricing, direct mail templates and sample contracts.
"A lot of telcos have invested a lot of money in their networks," says Donahue. "But they can't keep burning cash like they have been, and they're scrambling now to find new revenue sources from existing their network buildouts and customer base."
He believes the combination of the TECOS platform and the Sales Jump Start offering can help telcos quickly start generating the kind of incremental revenue they need.
While the TeleComputing offer has been received extremely well, the company faces an uphill battle as it enters the ASP-enablement business in the United States. Current Analysis' report says the company has a fight ahead of it, as it tries to make its brand more well-known in a highly competitive space that includes well-known names such as Corio (www.corio.com), Jamcracker (www.jamcracker.com), AT&T (www.att.com), IBM (www.ibm.com) and Sprint (www.sprint.com).
