Internet (ASP) vs Enterprise Workforce Solution

Index

1. Definition of ASP's
2. Benefits of the ASP Model
3. Benefits of the Enterprise Model
4. Hybrid Applications - Combining the Benefits
5. Comparing the True Cost of Ownership

Hybrid Applications - Combining the Benefits

The landscape is changing quickly, as the ASP and Enterprise models each morph into new hybrid models that combine the benefits of both architectures. The enabling technology behind this transformation is a new global standard called Web Services.

Web services are the fundamental building blocks in the move to distributed computing on the Internet.  Web Services are becoming the platform for application integration. Applications are constructed using multiple XML Web services from various sources that work together regardless of where they reside or how they were implemented.

Web services are a new breed of Web application. They are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Web services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes...Once a Web service is deployed, other applications (and other Web services) can discover and invoke the deployed service.

Exposing existing applications as XML Web services will allow users to build new, more powerful applications that use XML Web services as building blocks. For example, a user might develop a purchasing application to automatically obtain price information from a variety of vendors, allow the user to select a vendor, submit the order and then track the shipment until it is received. The vendor application, in addition to exposing its services on the Web, might in turn use XML Web services to check the customer's credit, charge the customer's account and set up the shipment with a shipping company.

What this means is that traditional Enterprise applications can be easily integrated to an ASP in order to gain certain functionality. For example, a Limousine company could purchase an Enterprise application that incorporates order entry, trip rating and billing functions, which would be integrated with an ASP that automatically verifies addresses, places them into the correct zone and dispatches the trip to the most appropriate driver.

Hybrid applications, using Web Services as connectivity points, can combine the benefits of both the Enterprise and ASP software architectures. The users gets the core functionality to run their business from an Enterprise application, then uses specific specialty ASP modules, such as dispatch, mapping and payment processing to provide a turnkey business solution.

Web Services is permanently changing the concept of software development and deployment.  Traditionally, software developers within the service industry have specialized knowledge within a particular vertical market. Yet, in the quest to meet their customers' needs for a turnkey solution, they develop modules outside of their core knowledge area. For example, a company specializing in Taxi software incorporates accounting software, which is really a completely different specialty. With Web Services, the Taxi company will be able to purchase the Taxi solution from one vendor, the accounting solution from a second specialized vendor and they will be seamlessly integrated through a Web Services interface.