The Best Resource Government Isn't Using

The Internet was blossoming and everything seemed possible. Up sprang companies that offered every service imaginable via the Internet -- everything from groceries to pet supplies and e-mail applications to shipment tracking. Best of all, one could use many software services without actually buying them -- instead they could be rented and accessed over the Web.

In this utopian world of hosted software available on-demand, the term application service provider (ASP) was coined -- one of the technology industry's many not-so-catchy acronyms. ASPs were at the threshold of opening countless doors behind which lay a world most in the industry couldn't even begin to imagine. But like most things that seem too good to be true, ASPs had a catch: It was too good an idea, one that was ahead of its time.

The short-lived dreams of ASPs were dashed when the existing IT infrastructure proved it was neither secure nor fast enough, and not nearly as reliable as was required. And so, around the turn of the century, ASPs limped off into a corner waiting for another moment to shine.


Resurrection
In less than a decade, the next generation of ASP has arrived. This time, though, it's called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and government has started noticing. Economic development agencies in Ohio and Virginia, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) are some of the early SaaS adopters. But what exactly is Software-as-a-Service?

"SaaS is, very simply, delivering application functionality over the Internet through a Web browser," said Leo Jolicoeur, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of @Road, an SaaS provider. "When we first put a label on ASP, it was originally the concept of taking existing licensed applications and delivering them in a sort of hosted form for customers who didn't want to buy that application. So it was all about applications that currently exist in licensed form delivered to customers without all that investment."

SaaS, according to Jolicoeur, is more than a rebranded ASP -- it's ASP grown up.

"As it's evolved from the original ASP offerings to Software-as-a-Service, we're seeing a much deeper, richer, robust set of applications and services that didn't necessarily exist in license form before," he said. "I think, in the future, we're going to see most applications delivered in Software-as-a-Service form."

There are tremendous possibilities built into SaaS for government, the most obvious of which is running an enterprise without buying any software -- meaning untold millions could be saved in licensing costs. Additionally SaaS means an agency need not dedicate IT staff to maintain and troubleshoot the application. That is all handled by the provider.

Other benefits include easy integration, collaboration, and free and automatic software updates. In most cases, only a Web browser and an Internet connection are necessary to access the software. Furthermore, the existing IT infrastructure enables both highly reliable and secure connections. However, this same infrastructure nearly killed ASP in the 1990s because it was not developed well enough to render ASP sustainable.

"The old ASPs were just sending things over the Internet that weren't necessarily secure, the servers weren't reliable and they didn't have appropriate backup systems; they didn't have fail over systems. These are the kinds of things we have that the old ASPs did not have," said Steve Nesenblatt, public sector vice president of RightNow Technologies. "[ASP] has evolved into a more reliable delivery mechanism. I don't think there's a core fundamental difference other than it's matured as a system to where larger organizations can rely on it."

Of course, Nesenblatt is aware that ASP critics are still around and will be quick to attack SaaS.