ASP Industry Consortium Passes Membership Milestone; Launched With 25 Members, Group Reaches 400 in Less Than a Year.

Business/Technology Editors

WAKEFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 30, 2000

Launched with 25 member companies in May 1999, the Application Service Provider Industry Consortium has surpassed the 400-member milestone in less than a year, the group announced today.

"When we formed the ASP Industry Consortium, not many people were familiar with the term `application service provider'," noted Traver Gruen-Kennedy, chairman of the Consortium. "Ten months later, a host of technology leaders - ranging from software manufacturers and vendors to telecommunications companies to Internet service providers - have been drawn to the ASP model because they recognize that this truly is something that will make computing accessible to the entire world."

From its 25 founding members in May of 1999, the ASP Industry Consortium reached 100 members in less than three months, marking that milestone on August 11, 1999. The Consortium surpassed 200 members in early November 1999, and reached the 300-member level in January of this year. Adding its 400th member on March 21, 2000 means that the Consortium has grown at a rate of better than one new member each day.

"It took six months to add our first 200 members, but only four months to add the second 200, which illustrates an explosive rate of growth that is really illustrative of the ASP industry as a whole," noted Gruen-Kennedy.

Gruen-Kennedy said he was particularly pleased that the Consortium has developed into a truly global organization, with representation from every continent. In addition to the United States, the Consortium includes representation from:

         Australia      Ireland        Malaysia

         Canada         Israel         The Netherlands

         France         Italy          Norway

         Germany        Japan          Singapore

         Hong Kong      Korea          United Kingdom

                                       Venezuela

"The fact that the ASP industry is growing so rapidly on an international scale underscores the need for the ASP Industry Consortium to serve as the unified voice for the industry on a worldwide basis," Gruen-Kennedy noted. "We're doing nothing less than mapping cyberspace - which is borderless - to the global community, which, as we all know, does have its divisions, cultural and otherwise.

"I am extremely proud to be involved in something that can extend computing capabilities around the world and help to diminish, if not dissolve, some of those divisions," he added.

It is appropriate, Gruen-Kennedy said, that the Consortium's 400th member should be an international one, Southrock Limited of Australia. Approximately 20 percent of the Consortium's membership is from outside the United States, he added.

The Consortium's rapid growth and its aggressive goals for the next year will be highlighted at the first Global Members Meeting, to be held May 2, 2000 in London.

The first 10 months of the Consortium's existence were marked by helping to educate the marketplace as to the benefits of the ASP delivery model. While education remains a vital component in the Consortium's list of goals, the group has also moved on to fostering best practices in the industry, sponsoring research and helping to grow the global marketplace, Gruen-Kennedy said. In particular, he highlighted the ASP Industry Consortium's work in the following areas:

--Best Practices. The ASPIC Best Practices Committee, which is working to discover, document and promote the industry's best practices for delivering ASP solutions, will highlight their choices at an awards ceremony to be held this fall.

--Research. The Consortium's Research Committee this year will commission more than a dozen studies and/or survey's covering a variety of markets and topics relating to application service provisioning. The first, a custom survey of the European ASP market conducted by Ovum, was released earlier this month. Results are available free of charge to all ASP Industry Consortium members through the Consortium's web site, www.allaboutasp.org.

--Global standards. The ASP Industry Consortium has also become involved with several global organizations in order to help develop a single contract for the ASP delivery model that will be valid around the world. In addition, the International Telecommunications Union has invited the ASP Industry Consortium to become a member and help educate the telecommunications community worldwide, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, about the benefits of the ASP model.

About the ASP Industry

An application service provider manages and delivers application capabilities to multiple entities from data centers across a wide area network, giving customers a viable alternative to procuring and implementing complex systems themselves. In some cases, ASPs even provide customers with a comprehensive alternative to building and managing internal information technology operations. ASP customers also are able to control more precisely the total cost of technology ownership through scheduled payment schemes.

Though the ASP market is relatively new, computer industry analysts foresee rapid growth and multi-billion-dollar annual sales within the next few years. End users cross industry lines and include anyone from the small office/home office (SOHO) client to large corporations and from complex businesses to specific verticals.

About the ASP Industry Consortium

Founded in May of 1999, the Application Service Provider Industry Consortium is an international advocacy group of more than 400 companies formed to promote the application service provider industry by sponsoring research, promoting best practices, and articulating the measurable benefits of this evolving delivery model. Its goals include educating the marketplace, developing common definitions for the industry, as well as serving as a forum for discussion and sponsoring research. Among the technology sectors represented among the ASP Industry Consortium membership are Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Network Service Providers (NSPs), Application Service Providers (ASPs), as well as emerging business models and other sectors supporting the industry.

Information on the ASP Industry Consortium - including a full list of member companies - is available at www.allaboutasp.org or by contacting the Consortium's headquarters at: ASP Industry Consortium, Inc., 401 Edgewater Place, Suite 500, Wakefield, Mass. 01880; Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; e-mail [e-mail].