An empirical investigation of determinants to buy application services from ASPs

The Application Service Provider (ASP) is a pivotal point in the organization of information systems, since it brings up a new paradigm: “make, buy or rent”. An ASP is a company, which manages and rents software to different users through an own data centre and network infrastructure, typically the Internet. In this way, the application services can be easily and quickly upgraded, which allows to distribute only the needed applications to different users in different places, without the disadvantage of fixed costs for them. This new challenge in the ICT arena aims to find its business on the capability to maximize scale and experience economies deriving from hardware and software management and maintenance, transferring this advantage to its clients, making them able to reduce ICT costs. The paper tested three hypotheses explaining the rent propensity, which is the propensity to buy application services from an ASP. In particular, two of the three hypotheses were confirmed. The fi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ECIS
• Authors: Vincenzo Morabito
• Keywords: Application Service, Application Service Provider, ECIS 2003, Information System, Information Technology