Sprint, Deloitte pair up for ASP offer

By David Rohde
Network World Fusion, 10/13/99

Another of the big IT consulting shops has paired up with a carrier to become an application service provider.

Sprint and Deloitte Consulting today announced that they would make a complete ASP offering to enterprises under a new alliance. The offer: Installation and maintenance of a key applications package, help desk support for that package and Sprint wide-area connectivity - all bundled into a single per-user, per-month price.

Key applications are expected to be those Deloitte already installs expertly: enterprise resource planning packages such as SAP and PeopleSoft, customer relationship management suites such as Siebel and numerous varieties of e-commerce installations.

Each ASP contract with a user will include a customized service-level agreement that cuts across the application layer, LAN and WAN connections, says Mark Schwartz, managing director of outsourcing services for Deloitte.

The alliance is not a joint venture with contributed equity from each company, but it is a standalone entity. The alliance is maintaining its own Web site at www.sprint.dc.com.

Today's deal has echoes of a move earlier this year in which Qwest and Deloitte competitor KPMG allied in an ASP venture. Qwest is building out Web-hosting "CyberCenters" to host the applications, with KPMG contributing a bank of 450 or so experts in enterprise-class applications.

Sprint likewise has Web hosting centers. Deloitte officials, however, say their alliance goes beyond the Qwest/KPMG deal because while Deloitte manages the applications, Sprint has been managing WAN equipment since launching its first frame relay managed-router program in 1994.

Qwest only began offering a program of managed routers and customer-premise ATM switches in July, and so far has had to use an outside contractor to perform the work. A Qwest spokeswoman says the company plans to bring managed data services in-house next year. Forrester Research analyst Mark Zohar says that will probably be accomplished via Qwest's acquisition of US West and its Interprise data-networking management subsidiary.

The Sprint/Deloitte ASP offer will include the customer's choice of connectivity options, including frame relay and private lines. But Jeff Anderson, Sprint's vice president of strategic development, says Sprint would really like prospects to consider using the carrier's Integrated On-Demand Network (ION) for the hosted applications. ION involves a customer-premise ATM device that dynamically allocates bandwidth from multiple applications, including voice, into a single access pipe to a specialized Sprint point of presence.

The fate of Sprint ION is expected to be a major point of discussion in network-integration talks between MCI WorldCom and Sprint officials if their merger goes through. Despite the potential uncertainty, Deloitte's Schwartz says he sees the merger as a plus to the new alliance, since MCI WorldCom has a lot of additional network assets such as bandwidth to contribute to any ASP offer.