Inprise CEO Outlines New Strategy in Support of Application Service Providers
New AppServices Unveiled at AEA Conference
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- At this week's American Electronics Association (AEA) conference, Inprise Corporation's (Nasdaq: INPR) interim President and Chief Executive Officer Dale Fuller unveiled the company's new strategy in support of application service providers (ASP). In addition, Fuller announced plans to create the new Inprise AppServices, a new service to integrate software and services from many application service providers into a single, easy-to-use suite.
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AppServices will allow customers to access different business application sources through a web-based portal that includes a unified suite of communication/collaboration/productivity tools, such as calendaring, messaging and discussion forums. Inprise and its partners plan to build and host AppServices. AppServices will enable end-users to access their applications and desktop via any networked device, operating system or protocol, using a standard browser interface.
"We expect the ASP market to grow significantly over the next five years and devised our new AppServices to provide a single point of access to various ASPs," said Fuller. "By giving customers a specialized software layer that integrates key components on the network, we give ASPs the glue and toolset that assist customers in significantly lowering total cost of ownership in software and hardware expenditures, reducing deployment time and giving them faster access to emerging technologies."
Inprise's strategy for ASPs consists of three layers. The first, a "user layer," provides users with a single point of entry and universal registration system from which to access applications from various ASPs being used within a company. The second, a "transport layer," allows a user to access ASP-hosted applications on different types of devices, removing the complexity of the ASP having to support many different devices. Finally, a "messaging layer" allows different applications from various ASPs to communicate with one another.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading market research analyst firm, worldwide spending for ASPs will increase from $150 million in 1999 to over $2 billion by 2003. |
