Millionaires wanted: money for the taking
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The telecom industry surely creates more millionaires per day than any other industry. Anybody with a glimmer of an idea can start a company and sell it in a couple of years for at least a few hundred million dollars. So why not get a piece of the action?
TeleChoice believes many of the application service providers (ASP) that will emerge over the next decade will come out of the enterprise ranks. We'll explain the logic of this assertion and then wait a few years to measure the reality. By then, if we're wrong, hopefully everyone will have forgotten.
Say you and your team set up an extranet, which includes e-commerce. To do this successfully, you'll go through a lengthy and probably painful process, including the following:
Weighing the pros and cons of outsourcing the content hosting and server management to a service provider, and if you outsource, deciding whether you'll use shared or dedicated servers.
Determining the level of customization required to incorporate an e-commerce or complete e-business package.
Figuring out whether outsourcing, development or using an off-the-shelf package with developer kits for customization is the right way to go.
Determining if the site will be mirrored, and thus contend with synchronization issues, or won't be but will then have a higher potential for failure.
Putting your backup system and methodology in place.
Implementing or ensuring appropriate load-balancing techniques.
Figuring out the required bandwidth for the site - average and peak - as well as the redundancy needed on Internet links.
Integrating the site with the back-office systems and supply chain.
Selecting and implementing your security plan, including authentication and firewalls.
Evaluating how you'll support credit card authorization.
Selecting a tool for tracking and managing the site.
Implementing the databases, search engines and caching equipment.
And, of course, making the site easy to use and enticing.
When you're finished, you'll be an expert at setting up an extranet for your particular industry. And maybe you will ask yourself, wouldn't it be nice if I could get all of this in one package from a company that really understands my industry and my unique needs? And poof! An ASP is born.
If you don't want the risk and uncertainty of going it alone, your company may find the opportunity interesting. After all, your company already will have a fabulous extranet up and running, so why not make money from it?
The bottom line is we are entering a phase in the industry's evolution where end users make outstanding candidates to start ASPs. You'd sell highly integrated services back into your own industry and gain a competitive advantage by using your knowledge of the environment, problems, applications and preferences.
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