KMC Telecom Holdings Inc. (www.kmctelecom.com) is testing the waters of the ASP market as it roles out hosted services in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Roanoke, Va. Among the hosted applications it will offer its small and mid-sized business customers are Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, QuickBooks and Great Plains Software.
With its ASP offering, KMC says it can help its business customers in these two markets save 40 percent to 60 percent of their annual IT costs. The reason: KMC owns and maintains the software licenses, as well as the back-end servers and customer premises equipment such as network routers and cabling. Pricing for the ASP services will vary depending on what hosted software each customer needs and the number of users.
“We are becoming a true business partner to our customers, one that can provide and integrate their total communications and information technology needs, and keep them ahead of the curve – without the headaches associated with staffing and maintaining their own technology requirements,” says Jason Adkins, city director for KMC in Roanoke.
To become an ASP, KMC will be relying on Proliant servers from Compaq Computer Corp. (www.compaq.com) to host the applications, as well as routers from Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) and hubs from Nortel Networks (www.nortelnetworks.com) to transport the data. Applications will be managed by Citrix Systems Inc.’s Metaframe software.
