- Are You Comfortable with the ASP's Approach to Major Data Center Issues Such as Backup, Disaster-Proofing, and Data and Physical Security?
- Can the ASP Provide the Type of Secure Broadband Network that Best Suits Your Requirements?
- Is the ASP's IT Infrastructure Scalable Enough to Accommodate Your Company's Growth or Variations in Activity?
- Do You Prefer that an Outside Party Remotely Monitor All the ASP's Facilities (Such as Data Centers) and Security Equipment (Such as Firewalls)?
- Do You Require that the Application You Lease Be Extensively Customized?
- Do You Need Accelerated Deployment of the Hosted Application?
- Which, If Any, of these Hosted Enabling Technologies Do You Need, and Why?
- What Extent of Technical Support and Customer Service Do You Require?
- Which ASP Pricing Model Best Meets Your Company's Activity Patterns—Does the ASP Offer that Model?
- Does the ASP's Standard Service Level Agreement (SLA) Meet Your Needs? If Not, Will the ASP Change It, and How Much Does It Charge to Change It?
5. Do You Require that the Application You Lease Be Extensively Customized?
If so, expect to be charged extra for that service, according to a traditional time and materials formulaand try to get a price estimate up front. The standard hosted application is already 80% mapped to the customer's business processesthat's why ASPs specialize in certain applications for specific vertical markets. Any further customization is considered a professional service. Pure Play ASPs offer only 80% applicationswhat are called Full Service Providers offer additional customization. It's during customization that the customer must decide what additional parts of the company's business processes must map to the hosted application, whether the hosted application will be integrated with legacy applications, and how tightly the ASP should integrate the hosted application to mission-critical applications in the event the customer wants to "unplug" them later.