Application Service Provider (ASP) Model
One of the most profound changes in intranet development has been the emergence of Application Service Providers over the past several years. These companies provide full end-to-end solutions for companies that want to build corporate intranets, and offer them for substantially less money than it would normally cost to develop a proprietary application.
The ASP providers have built their businesses on the fact that companies who pay for their own development, maintenance, and staffing costs related to their intranets are never guaranteed a good product. They offer an alternative to this uncertainty.
ASP products will typically be fully customizable. You can integrate your own corporate designs for all the relevant templates (using a friendly web-based interface in most cases) or select a set of their standard designs and just add your logo to them. You can also choose from many different functional components that they make available, and pay for only what you want. This allows you to build your intranet site to the specifications outlined in your Needs Analysis and not worry about all the technical details (which will be a highly subjective positive or negative factor).
There are many ASP intranet companies in the marketplace today, and more emerging every few months. Some of the top-tier companies to consider are:
- http://www.intranets.com
- http://www.intranetfactory.com
- http://www.infostreet.com
- http://www.intrasmart.com
- http://www.sitescape.com
The benefits to going with a ASP company are that only a minimal amount of technical resources will be required to set-up the intranet site, and that non-technical staff will be able to maintain it through a CMS. In addition, the ASPs will typically have 24-7 technical support available.
The drawback to this type of solution is that the investment will be ongoing, with cost formulas based on raw usage, number of users, amount of storage space used, components selected, and miscellaneous other factors (each model is unique to the company). As well, they all have monthly or annual fees that your company will have to continue paying to keep your intranet site located there. And, unfortunately, if you change your mind and want to deploy your intranet internally later, most of the integration work done with the ASP will be lost. Additionally, consider the financial health of the ASP because if its business fails your Intranet may as well.