Qwest and Interpath Communications are introducing new application-hosting services that let business users off-load the management, maintenance and monitoring of high-end enterprise applications.
The new services will let customers rent applications without having to deploy the software, servers or the additional IT staff to support the new applications.
Qwest's and Interpath's announcements last week come on the heels of several other application service provider (ASP) initiatives introduced earlier this month from Sprint, US WEST and others (NW, May 17, page 14).
Qwest announced last week that it plans to offer business users hosted Siebel Systems sales force automation software called Siebel Sales for Workgroups. The service lets business users set up their sales groups on secure hosted servers in one of Qwest's data centers. The servers can be accessed through a dedicated or dial-up Internet access connection.
The standard Siebel service has a customer's applications hosted on Hewlett-Packard servers, but Qwest will support other servers per customer request, says Lewis Wilks, president of Internet and multimedia markets at Qwest.
Today, Qwest has three data centers that will support 24-7 network, application and server monitoring for the company's application-hosting customers. Each of the data centers has at least one OC-48 dedicated Internet connection. Wilks says that Qwest will have 10 data centers operational by year-end to support its applicationhosting customers.
Pricing is not yet available for Qwest's hosted Siebel application services. However, Wilks says Qwest's hosted SAP financial applications will cost $150 to $250 per month, per user.
Users also need to keep in mind that this price does not include Internet access to the applications, warns Steve Murry, an analyst with International Data Corp., a consulting firm in Framingham, Mass. And users may find that they need to beef up their bandwidth when outsourcing their enterprise applications.
"Many of these applications were not designed for WAN access, so users may find that a 56K modem won't cut it," Murry says.
Interpath, a regional ASP in the Southeast, is also jumping on the SAP application-hosting bandwagon. Interpath is teaming with the software company and Sun to bring Interpath's services to market.
SAP Accelerated Financials is the first application that Interpath will be offering business customers sometime in the third quarter. Interpath customer's SAP applications will be hosted on shared Sun Solaris Enterprise servers and Sun StorEdge storage systems. Interpath is providing 24-7 management and monitoring from its Research Triangle Park, N.C., network operations center.
Interpath also plans on rolling out an SAP Accelerated Human Resources application-hosting service by year-end. But users will have to wait to find out how much both SAP services will cost, because pricing is not available.
Interpath's services will be available only to business users in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
Qwest: (800) 899-7780; Interpath: (800) 849-6305
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