In the year 2000 when society was in the midst of realizing how technology and the Internet in particular was going to change the world, I noticed there was a need by companies and carriers to better understand the hosted communications  space. There were a number of companies with very compelling business models being launched such as Congruency, the early pioneer and leader of the communication ASP movement.
Shortly after realizing the need for education in the market, TMC launched a magazine titled Communications ASP. The magazine was a hit with advertisers and readers for about six months until the VC community and the tech market as a whole seemed to turn on the term "ASP." I haven't a clue to this day why the acronym wasn't accepted but it seemed to get lumped in with other technologies which were left for dead but emerged later -- like "ecommerce," "VoIP" and others.
Suffice it say this publication and dozens of companies in the space were sentenced to death when funding was cut off by investors. I credit Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, for defying gravity and keeping his ASP and the entire movement going.
This leading hosted CPvM company showed Wall Street that the ASP model was a good one and now we take for granted that hosted communications and hosted everything else is something the market needs -- especially in a slow economy. But now we call it "cloud -based" computing or "hosted" or "on-demand" or whatever seems to be trendy at the moment.
I was thinking about the history of ASPs during a meeting with Evolve IP's Scott Kinka, the senior vice president of network services. Kinka's company supplies hosted voice, security , UC and messaging services to companies in the U.S. During our conversation he kept mentioning call center wins and how companies are embracing hosted contact center solutions.
He in turn referenced Paul Adams, the director of product management for enhanced services at Broadsoft, the company supplying Evolve IP with equipment which allows their company to in turn provide services to their SMB, enterprise and call center customers.
I know Broadsoft very well as a major player in IP communications -- their Broad Works platform is a vital cog in the carrier machine of providing services for customers. (continued...)
© 2009 Customer Inter@ction Solutions under contract with MarketWatch. All rights reserved.
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