Cloud Computing Avoids Downfall of Application Service Providers

Businesses have become dependent on ever increasing amounts of electronic information and rapid transaction speeds. Experts such as Diffie [1] speculate that the end of isolated computing is at hand, and that within the next decade most businesses will have made the shift to utility computing. In order to cut costs while still implementing increasingly complex Information Technology services, many companies turned to Application Service Providers (ASPs). Due to poor business models, over competition, and poor internet availability and bandwidth, many ASPs failed with the dot com crash. Other ASPs, however, who embraced web services architecture and true internet delivery were well placed as early cloud adopters. With the expanded penetration and bandwidth of internet services today, better business plans, and a wide divergence of offering, cloud computing is avoiding the ASP downfall, and is positioned to emerge as an enduring paradigm in computing.