Tag Archives: Fort Lauderdale

About 1782 days ago Data Security

Tech Talk: E-mail Storage Sails for Boat Supplier

Quantum Marine Engineering, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., custom makes boat stabilizers, thrusters and other hydraulic equipment for yachts all over the world. Staff members rely on e-mail to communicate with customers. IT Director Michael Bartlett tells IncTechnology.com how e-mail archiving helped the company manage mailboxes and facilitated e-mail retrieval on demand. Elizabeth Wasserman: How does your business use information technology? Michael Bartlett: The single technology that the owners of Quantum have decided and maintained as critical to our business is e-mail. Our market is worldwide. We build custom equipment that is essentially for boat builders. A lot of communication is from the sales side and engineering side, between our engineers and ship builders, and between our engineering staff and captains and those on board. These often have to do with specifications on board, changes in specifications back and forth and, because sales are worldwide and we’re driven by e-mail, keeping records of who said what to whom and when is critical for us. Wasserman: So what problems did you encounter? Bartlett: Everybody wants to grow their mailboxes without restraint. They want to keep all of their inbound and outbound e-mail as a record. Because technical specifications are spent back and forth and projects stretch of several years, sometimes staff changes and then you have a point of dispute with the customer. The original specification was half inch. At some point, it changed to three-quarters of an inch. And we have to know who changed what and when. Some mailboxes grew to 2 gigs. At that point, we started have problem with our Exchange performance and the individual users’ performance — especially if they were mobile users. Wasserman: Why did you decide on an archiving solution? Bartlett: To have a permanent record that is separate from the Exchange server. We decided to use the GFI MailArchiver. This way, the e-mail is not deleted, it can’t be manipulated, and we can search it and track things down. A huge reason is to keep the size of the individual Exchange mailboxes down. We have a default limit of 250 megs for individual e-mail boxes. Once people understand we have a separate archive of all e-mails, they realize they don’t have to save everything. It keeps the database smaller and it has improved the Exchange system performance. Wasserman: How has this helped your business? Bartlett: The system we’re using is searchable. Our administrators can search the whole database. Each department head has the ability to search through their department e-mails. We had a moment already when the owners realized that this was a good move. We had one of those situations where a product arrived at a shipyard and the specifications were not right. We had to find the e-mail where the specifications were changed. The engineers on both ends had made changes. I was able to find this e-mail in five minutes. That proved the worth of the system in everyone’s eyes.

About 2298 days ago Setting Up a Website

Smart Links: Tips for Linking to Other Sites

our beautiful site

“Let your fingers do the walking” was the old Yellow Pages slogan. These days, the more relevant saying for customers may be this: “Let your fingers do the clicking.” As the Internet becomes an increasingly low-cost and effective way to do business, many small and mid-size companies are finding they get better customer prospects by exchanging links with related websites than they do by putting an ad in the phone book.  But there is an art to linking. There are right ways and wrong ways to link and be linked to. It’s not surprising that many businesses are a bit at a loss about how to use links to generate targeted traffic to the company website. “The primary lead and customer acquisition source is becoming the Web versus traditional marketing sources, and every year we’ve seen our customers make more and more of an investment in online marketing,” says John Enright, vice president of marketing for Affinity Internet, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which provides services ranging from site design to online marketing to hosting and maintenance. In a recent survey, Affinity found that more than 30 percent of its mostly small business customers expect to spend more than half of their marketing budgets on online efforts. A cheaper way to market online The good news is that it doesn’t cost much to get links from — and link to — other websites; often it’s just an investment of your time to find the right sites and communicate with their owners, or ante up for a software package or service that helps automate the end-to-end linking process. Enright advises small businesses to find potential linking partners by checking out the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, and looking for the keywords in which they’d like to be ranked highly. Then, reach out to exchange links with those related websites that have a high rank for those keywords. That’s a step to getting noticed by visitors to those highly-ranked sites, and also by search engines. “If you have links to your site from other websites that also have high Google or other search engine ranks, the search engines will think that your content is that much more valuable,” he says. But don’t make the mistake of trading links with a multitude of websites, whether or not they have anything to do with your industry, just to increase your search engine ranking. In fact, some experts advise that to be successful with linking activities, small businesses should act as if search engines don’t exist. “Focus on your website visitors, not on search engines,” says Johannes Selbach, CEO of Axandra, a German company that manufacturers Arelis, software that helps companies manage their linking campaigns. “A link partner with a low Google PageRank that has a similar topic like your site will bring you much better visitors than an unrelated link partner with a high PageRank.” The less dependent your website is on search engines, Selbach says, the less you have to worry about keeping up with their ever-changing search algorithms. The do’s and don’ts of linking Linking is a reciprocal arrangement. Businesses are unlikely to drive away traffic by adding targeted links. Since customers are going to leave your website at some point anyway, isn’t it better that they move on to websites that send you their visitors in return? “Carefully chosen links to outside resources can improve the experience of visitors,” says Selbach.  “The websites to which you link help your website visitors to put your website into a larger context. If you link to high-quality sites with useful content, Web surfers will associate your website with these high quality sites.” Here are some other tips about how to link the right way: Do submit your links to service directories, such as local or industry directories. There’s typically no charge to do this, and they’re a draw for both businesses and consumers. Look at where your traffic is coming from. “You may find a particular website that you weren’t aware of is producing a lot of traffic for you, and you can go out and talk to them and see if you can increase your exposure there,” says Enright. Practice Internet etiquette: While you can add links to other sites without informing their webmasters, why miss out on the opportunity to make them aware of your site so they can link to it? Don’t link to junk websites. Linking to websites that are obvious spammers can hurt your search engine rankings. Don’t go link-crazy. Linking to too many other websites may cause search engines to identify you as a link directory, and downgrade your ranking. Fully integrate your link pages with the rest of your website, rather than create link pages just for search engines. Tools that automate link exchange processes can help you save time, as long as they focus on creating high-quality links. “If you use a tool that gets hundreds of unrelated links in a very short time, then this won’t do your website any good,” says Selbach. “You will actually lose time because you will have to fix the damage that these link farm products do to your site.”

About 4581 days ago E-Commerce

At Your Service

Web Wise Service companies need a touch of ingenuity to make the Web work for them. Explicators of the digital economy generally break down E-commerce into four handy categories. First there are the purveyors of stuff — those who sell puppy chow and mascara to consumers, or generators and ball bearings to industry. Next come the purveyors of content, such as the Wall Street Journal, Dun & Bradstreet, and Stephen King. Then there are the “purveyors of eyeballs,” whose ranks include companies like Yahoo that make money selling banner ads on their Web sites — chiefly to the purveyors of stuff and content. Finally, there are the purveyors of Web-based services, the so-called ASPs, that reduce the Internet to just one more company department. But that view of the E-commerce landscape leaves people like me up a creek without an online revenue model. I’m a Web marketing consultant — a service provider whose expertise (aside from the occasional Web-site review) can’t be confined to a digital stream. In that sense I’m like countless other companies that dry-clean clothes, repair cars, massage aching muscles, read palms, and provide other services for which the Web holds little apparent advantage beyond that offered by flyers plastered on windshields. But perhaps service businesses — particularly small, local companies — have lagged in the new economy not for lack of opportunity but for lack of imagination. Think your day spa or television-repair shop or exterminator service gains nothing by going online? Think again. Take, for example, Nick’s Auto Repair Inc. ( www.nicksautorepair.com), which has been at the same location in Boulder, Colo., for more than 20 years. Nick’s proprietors understand that mere longevity doesn’t necessarily translate into familiarity or trust, so they’ve built a Web site designed to inspire those sentiments in customers old and new. First the familiar: visitors to Nick’s Web site are warmly introduced to the company’s past and present. They learn the names and backgrounds of all five of Nick’s employees and are treated to reassuring photos of technicians up to their elbows in car engines. The site also traces the company history, going back before 1978. Although such background may or may not testify to a company’s performance, history adds ballast, and local history anchors a company in its community, which may matter a great deal to some customers. But in choosing an auto mechanic, trust is even more important than familiarity. Nick’s site engenders trust through both its helpful presentations and its straightforward approach to the company’s limitations. “The work we are not able to do is because of a lack of space,” Nick’s site informs its visitors. It goes on to explain: “We have three technicians with three bays. As a result, we are not able to do any major overhauls. However, if you need this type of work done, we will be more than happy to point you to a reliable specialist.” Then Nick’s site does something really smart: it provides three pages of detailed information about an engine’s ignition, fuel, and cooling systems, handsomely illustrated with pictures of an ignition coil and a distributor cap. While this material demonstrates the company’s expertise, it also suggests to the site visitor that Nick’s doesn’t use intentional obfuscation as a sales tactic, which is enormously reassuring to those of us who don’t know the difference between a fan belt and a Sansabelt, and who feel vulnerable in the presence of those who do. Nick’s site is also interactive: the company can send E-mail estimates to its customers, who in turn can look up information written in plain English concerning, say, pickup coils. Dry cleaners have traditionally made hay from their bricks-and-mortar status: a “plant on premises” claim is considered a major selling point in their line of business. So what can an online presence do for a dry cleaner? The people at Dry Cleaning Depot ( www.drycleaningdepot.com) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., know their customers will never be able to get rid of gravy stains by hitting the Delete key, but they’ve figured out another way to make the Internet work for them. “Got a minute?” the company site asks customers. “Probably not. Let Dry Cleaning Depot be your corporate partner. We will pick up and drop off your dry cleaning right where you work.” A nice service, but not exactly Web-centric, right? Then how about this: the site offers its customers a 10% discount on their first bill if they sign up for the service online. Customers can also indicate their starch preferences and, better still, use their credit cards online. That means they don’t have to write checks every week or shamefacedly reimburse the receptionist who shelled out $25 to reclaim their silk blouse and crushed-velvet trousers. And there’s a monthly billing option for those who’d rather not release their credit-card information over the Internet. In addition, Dry Cleaning Depot aggressively pursues new customers using that proven online tactic: word of E-mail. Customers are invited to E-mail the Depot with the name and address of prospective corporate accounts, along with some contact information. If three or more people from the suggested company sign up for the Depot’s services, the referring customer receives $25 worth of free dry cleaning. By advertising that offer on its site and making the referral process super easy, Dry Cleaning Depot is using the Internet to accrue new business. What can consultants, doctors, lawyers, and accountants do online besides boast about their skills? But what about those of us in the professional services? I’m no snob, but offering 25% off my consultation fee to customers tendering an online coupon is a bit dÉclassÉ for a Web-marketing consultancy. And if you need to consult a glossary to understand my advice, then I’m not doing my job. So what can consultants — not to mention doctors, lawyers, and accountants — do online besides boast about their skills, post a list of clients, and archive articles? We, too, can get interactive. That’s what Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have done, which should come as no surprise given the Web’s pride of place in their celebrated one-to-one marketing philosophy. On its site ( www.1to1.com), the pioneering customer-relationship-management consulting firm has posted interactive tools that inform, entertain, and — best of all — explain why you need its help. For example, a program called Checkpoint poses a series of questions about your company: What percentage of your customers account for the bulk of your company’s profits? How different are your customers from one another? And so on. The site then produces a chart, based on your responses, that shows how valuable a one-to-one program would be for your organization. And, no, the results aren’t always that such a program would be ” really, really valuable.” If the Peppers-Rogers Web application is smart, Eric Ward’s is inspired. Ward’s company, Netpost ( www.netpost.com), has been helping clients raise their hands on the Internet since 1994. Ward’s understanding of Web-site publicity is unsurpassed, and — not surprisingly — his public Web site is grand. But it’s the secret-password-protected portion of the site that exemplifies service-company marketing at its finest. Want the password to it? First you have to attend one of his seminars. In vivid detail, Ward lays before his audiences the glorious gestalt of marketing Web sites. He explains how a company can make its presence felt on search engines. And in directories. And on What’s New sites. And in E-zines, newsletters, newsgroups, discussion lists, and on, and on, and on. At the end of his presentations, Ward gives his audiences a gift: the password to the section of his site where all his resources, tools, and ideas are laid bare, ripe for the plucking. Anyone with the time and inclination can follow the bouncing browser and obtain without charge the services for which other people pay Ward serious money. Why would he allow such a thing? Usually, those who are willing to invest the time it takes to follow his exhaustive program on their own are people who couldn’t afford him in the first place. Whereas those who value time over money and who want the job done right by the best in the business flock to Ward and count themselves lucky that the maestro isn’t booked into the next millennium. Service companies are purveyors of expertise, skills, and knowledge, which in the end will always be tougher to sell online than content, banner ads, and stuff. The trick, perhaps, is to learn a lesson from the Wizard of Oz. Use your public face in whatever way possible to impress the hell out of people, but always be sure that the man behind the curtain is fulfilling his promises. Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing, in Santa Barbara, Calif., is a speaker, a consultant, and the author of the books Email Marketing, World Wide Web Marketing, and Customer Service on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons). Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4673 days ago E-Commerce

Start-Up Diaries: A Vexing Catch-22

Start-Up Diaries: Update Unable to find funding, 10 Minute Manicure reluctantly takes a step backward 10 Minute Manicure Company: Would-be chain of manicure kiosks in airports Founders: Vivian Jimenez, 32; Lorraine Brennan O’Neil, 36; and Karen Janson, 34 Making the call to the Pittsburgh Airport Authority was one of the toughest things that 10 Minute Manicure cofounder and CEO Karen Janson ever had to do. She was, she knew, admitting defeat. Janson and her cofounders — Vivian Jimenez and Lorraine Brennan O’Neil — had to back out of their hard-won agreement for space for the first of what they had hoped would be a chain of manicure-on-the-fly kiosks in airports throughout the country. Stepping back from that dream “was absolutely not what I wanted,” Janson recalls. But instead she did have something else that she had wanted for much longer — her first child was on the way. And with the unexpected, but happy, news of her pregnancy, Janson and her colleagues found themselves in a vexing catch-22. They had already achieved what everyone — in their minds — had doubted they could in getting the airport contract in the first place. “It was beyond our wildest dreams that we got Pittsburgh to buy into our concept,” says Janson. But the one thing they had failed to do was to find a much-needed financial backer. “So far we still haven’t found cushion money,” explains Janson. “You go to these meetings with a certain little bit of cynicism at this point. We’ve met with so many people.” Originally, the three women had thought that Janson, the only cofounder who had completely given up a job to launch the business, could travel regularly to Pittsburgh until they had the funds (a minimum of $250,000, they calculated) to hire permanent staff. But Janson’s pregnancy changed all that, and finding a backer became essential. Months into the money hunt, the women were becoming used to the objections: most prospective investors wanted to see proof of concept, up and running. “Most of them don’t want to put money in a concept without money on the books,” says Janson. “They’d like to see the actual thing happening.” But perhaps more frustrating was the fact that many of the investors that they talked to had unrealistic expectations — anticipating a return on investment in line with some of the Nasdaq stars. “One company we talked to wanted, in three years, $100 million,” says Janson. “We just can’t compete with that.” For now, the women have not given up. They are allowing themselves another 90 days (from June 1) to see if they can launch a more modest site closer to home — perhaps in a local Miami office building. “We’ve already started talks with several different leasing companies that manage buildings in both Miami and Fort Lauderdale,” Janson reports. “We felt like if we can get one store up and running, we’ll go back to the investors who said maybe.” But they know that time is starting to run out. If they can’t get a site launched in the next few months, Janson says, “it’s going to be very difficult for us to overcome.” In hindsight the founders realize that pursuing only the airport-kiosk business was probably a strategic mistake. But for the time being, they are still willing to stick it out longer if there is a chance of success. Even if 10 Minute Manicure fails to get off the ground, the experience already has been life changing for at least one of the cofounders. “Even if this disappears, I’ve had a taste of this kind of life,” Jimenez explains. “I can’t imagine going back to the drudgery of the corporate world.” –Karen Dillon Where they are now Hire authority Company: edu.com, in Boston, creator of a Web site where college students can buy stuff cheap and where the companies selling that stuff can do research on a students-only audience Founder: Adam Kanner, 29 Status: Kanner has been in Mike Wallace mode recently: all he seems to do is interview people. Edu.com’s founder and CEO spent most of the spring sizing up close to 75 candidates for a slew of senior-management positions — -including a chief technology officer, a vice-president of customer insight, and, most important, a president. “We were looking for a COO but hired a CEO-caliber person, meaning he and I are going to run this business in partnership,” says Kanner. The president will free Kanner from “process and organization and all those wonderful internal things,” says the CEO. It also means a new, probably healthier, reporting relationship for Linda Kanner, vice-president of marketing and Adam’s mom. “That’s going to be good for us,” says Adam Kanner. Meanwhile, the CEO, who still lives in a fourth-floor walk-up the size of a postage stamp, is contemplating buying a washer and dryer for Edu.com’s offices. “It would certainly make my life easier,” he says. –Leigh Buchanan License for success Company: Application Technologies, in San Diego, a licenser of new packaging technology, notably the Appli-K Pouch Founder: Johann Verheem, 34 Status: Solid licensing agreements mean the pouch will be used in dozens of skin-care and medical products by mid-2001. The company won’t break $1 million in revenues this year, but long term, revenues should well exceed expectations. In six to nine months the technology will be established, and Verheem is already thinking exit strategy and on to the next venture. –Michael Warshaw On the shelf Company: Inca Quality Foods, in South Bend, Ind., a distributor and “micromerchandiser” of Hispanic foods in grocery stores Founder: Luis J. Espinoza, 49 Status: Espinoza, after exploring a few potential joint ventures that have not worked out, has reduced Inca Quality Foods to a warehouse operation for local Hispanic grocery stores in the South Bend area. He has several ideas for future projects, but none has been compelling enough to pull him away from his full-time job and the pension he’ll be eligible for in two years. –Nancy Lyons 3-D operation Company: FÚxito Worldwide Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., a Web site offering E-commerce, news, and recruiting data for the international soccer community Founders: Richard Powell, 21; and Daniel Hoffer, 22 Status: When interviewed on his 21st birthday, CEO Powell knew exactly what would make an ideal gift: $10 million. Not coincidentally, that’s how much FÚxito hopes to raise in its second round of funding. In the meantime, in order to “make sure we can last out any hiccups in the Nasdaq or in general investor sentiment,” Powell negotiated a short-term cash infusion from existing investors. He’ll spend the money acquiring and creating content for the site, which has lately grown to include coverage of women’s soccer and has introduced a 3-D component. “We’re seeing a consolidation in our market, but we’re unfazed,” says Powell, who expects to return to Harvard University as a senior this fall. “We’ve built our company on a solid foundation.” –Joshua Hyatt Read the complete Start-Up Diaries series. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4795 days ago E-Commerce

Upstarts: ASPs

Software on the Web ASPs are coming ASAP The entire software industry is about to be turned upside down. Say good-bye to software as we know it You know the computer industry is innovating too fast when it has to start recycling its acronyms. The term ASP was once known in Webspeak as an “active server page,” referring to a Web page that’s generated at the time it’s downloaded. But the term has recently taken on another meaning, and a host of start-ups are using the idea behind it to turn the traditional, shrink-wrapped software industry on its head. The “new” ASP refers to a type of computer business called an application service provider, which offers outsourcing with an Internet twist. An ASP hosts software applications, which its customers access over the Web instead of running them on their own computers. ASPs aim to save their customers the costs and hassle of owning and managing technology, by “renting” to them whatever software they need. Rather than wrestling with a new upgrade, say, an ASP’s customers are free to focus on better things. “We tell our customers to mind their own businesses,” explains Jostein Eikeland, a 32-year-old Norwegian former rock-video and movie producer, who launched one of the first ASPs and is credited with having coined the term ASP in 1996. The exciting — and befuddling — thing about ASPs is that the software they offer can be anything under the sun, ranging from a consumer application like Microsoft’s Hotmail (a free Web-based E-mail service that the Redmond giant hosts — which made the company an ASP before the term came into vogue), to bundled office suites (spreadsheets, word processing, and so on), to complicated enterprise applications like customer-relationship management or sales-force automation. But as with any big market change, this upheaval has created a window of opportunity. Right now that window is incredibly wide. Many different kinds of companies are jumping into the ASP industry, including computer hardware and software makers (such as Sun and Microsoft), network service providers (AT&T and Qwest), Internet service providers (UUNet), and newly minted start-ups. As Forrester Research senior analyst Stacie McCullough wrote in a recent report on the ASP industry: “More than 300 vendors claim to be an ASP — each offering a different story and solution. … It’s no wonder users are confused and skeptical.” Lost amid the hype is the fact that the ASP sector, with $933 million in revenues last year, is still minuscule compared with the $74-billion software-application market. McCullough estimates that less than 1% of companies are renting their software through ASPs, though that number is projected to grow exponentially as the market swells to $11.3 billion by 2003. What follows is a selection of the variety of ways start-ups are joining the ASP gold rush. The ASP department store Jostein Eikeland happened on the idea of a one-stop, soup-to-nuts ASP in 1995 — the equivalent of ASP ancient history. Back then he was a 27-year-old working in sales for a systems integrator, which was having a bear of a time completing a massive software installation for a Norwegian bank. Eikeland’s hunt for a solution led him to Citrix, whose technology allowed the bank’s desktop applications to run from a centralized server managed remotely. It struck Eikeland that “this would be the new wave of outsourcing.” Five years, some 200 employees, and some $50 million in funding later, Eikeland’s company, TeleComputing Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is one of the leaders in the ASP field. TeleComputing has more than 100 customers and hosts hundreds of applications, including industry-specific systems, such as those for car dealerships and law firms, as well as business-function-specific software, for operations like accounting or human-resources management. Customers pay an average of $350 per month per user for a three- to five-year contract. Given that so many companies are reinventing themselves to jump onto the ASP bandwagon, Eikeland is particularly proud to be the bandwagon. “Every revenue dollar that we have has come solely from ASP services,” he says. Enabling other ASPs One of the trickier aspects of launching an ASP is figuring out how to charge for your services. Pricing models in the industry are almost as numerous as the applications themselves. Many companies even offer customers a choice of how they would like to pay — by subscriber, by transaction, or by number of ports or concurrent users. So billing can quickly become an ASP entrepreneur’s biggest nightmare. And as Scott Swartz, CEO of MetraTech, likes to say, “without billing, it’s just a hobby.” Swartz, who in a former life helped Fortune 500 companies develop their accounts-receivable systems, entered the ASP market almost serendipitously, in late 1997, when he started MetraTech to sell a “next-generation Web-based billing system.” His plan was to build, host, and sell his system piece by piece to customers — largely telecommunications companies — on an as-needed basis. “I can’t tell you I started off going after the ASP market,” he readily concedes. Swartz quickly realized that MetraTech’s flexible billing software could help ASPs of all sizes — from “one person in a shoe box to a tier-one telecom company” — price their services. “We ASP to the ASPs, allowing them to do their ASPing,” he says with a straight face. The privately funded Waltham, Mass., company began selling its products (ranging in price from $20,000 to $1.5 million) in mid-December and expects to achieve revenues of $6 million this year. Zeroing in on one industry AristaSoft’s story sounds like the quintessential Silicon Valley soap-opera plot. Venture capitalist named Rich issues $10-million challenge in Upside magazine to find the person who can deliver enterprise resource planning (ERP) software — which manufacturers use to integrate all their internal applications — over high-speed phone lines. Indian technologist — call him Lucky — who has written a white paper on software as a shared rental service, reads Upside article and sends Rich E-mail. Rich (last name Shapero), managing partner of Crosspoint Venture Partners, meets with Lucky (a.k.a. Amar “Lucky” Lakhtakia). Three months later, in January 1999, Lucky is in business in an ASP start-up positioning itself as the IT department for high-tech manufacturers, with an enviable $5 million in the bank and a top-notch CEO. Ten months later Lucky’s company, AristaSoft, in Mountain View, Calif., has $30 million more in the bank, 60 employees, and its first live customer, a Silicon Valley high-tech manufacturing start-up. In a dramatic illustration of the economies wrought by ASPs, AristaSoft implemented in 60 days what could have taken its customer up to a year to do on its own: namely, install a complete finance, distribution-and-logistics, and manufacturing software system, which AristaSoft now hosts, services, and maintains. AristaSoft CEO Drew Hoffman says that the company will eventually host 30 applications (“light, heavy, and medium”), for which it will charge customers from $5,000 to $30,000 a month, depending on the application and the number of users. Software for the masses Most players in the ASP space are going after the business-to-business sector of the marketplace, but not Cameron Chell, founder of C Me Run, a new consumer-oriented ASP service company that incorporated last November. At the age of 31, Chell is an industry veteran and the founding president of the ASP Industry Consortium. In 1996 he launched a business-to-business ASP. Today that company, the publicly traded FutureLink Distribution Corp., in San Francisco, has a market capitalization in excess of $1 billion. Now Chell has teamed up with four FutureLink colleagues — as well as Warren Talbot, who started up Microsoft’s ASP licensing program — to tackle what the founders think is an overlooked sector of the ASP boom: brand-name software for consumers. C Me Run will strike licensing deals with well-known software developers (Microsoft comes to mind, but the company is also in discussions with Corel, Lotus, and several game and educational developers, among others) and then host their applications for Internet service providers, portals, and telecom companies. In turn, these businesses will offer those bundled programs to their subscribers for monthly fees (ranging in price from free to $15, depending on the number and type of programs). By serving the AOLs, MSNs, Qwests, and Yahoos of the world (the company is also in discussions with the second-largest ISP in Europe), C Me Run aims to alleviate what Talbot zealously describes as “the biggest civil-rights problem of the 21st century”: access to information for general consumers. Q&A Mining for ASP Gold Phil Wainewright, founder and managing editor of ASPnews.com, likens himself to “the guy who was already there selling the maps when the prospectors started turning up at the gold fields.” Wainewright has tracked the emerging ASP sector full-time since October 1998, when he established his Web site to be “the source for ASP news and analysis.” He recently spoke with contributing writer Alessandra Bianchi about the ASP gold rush. Inc.: It seems as though everyone and his brother are calling themselves an ASP these days. How would you define an ASP? Wainewright: People use the term ASP to mean many things, but from an end user’s point of view, the concept is very straightforward — an ASP is someone that operates software so that you don’t have to. ASPs take care of all the complexity of getting it working in the first place and all the worry of keeping it working from then on. An ASP does all of that on its own premises and lets users access the applications across a data link, usually the Internet. Inc.: Outsourcing is not a new idea. What makes ASPs different, and why have they suddenly become a hot opportunity? Wainewright: ASPs spread the cost of designing their solution across several customers who all take pretty much the same recipe. As time goes on, that cost-sharing element is going to really drive prices way down, much more than most people currently expect. Inc.: What about the broader business implications? Is the traditional software industry dead, as many headlines have announced? Wainewright: People will continue to buy software but will get an increasing proportion of it via subscription or on a pay-as-you-go basis. The software industry believes the ASP model will make software more popular because it makes it easier to use, and with a subscription-based payment method, it costs less to start using it. But the established players are also worried it could mean a short-term loss of revenues while they change from the purchase model, where they get all their money up front, to a subscription model that spreads the revenue stream out over time. The more serious threat to traditional software players is over the longer term because new generations of software are much better suited to the ASP model than today’s leading packages are. Inc.: What are some of the smarter new ASP players doing to compete against the established giants who are also entering the ASP arena? Wainewright: Start-ups are much better positioned than the established giants, who don’t yet realize how much they’re going to have to change to adapt to the ASP model. One of the biggest differences is that ASPs sell a service, whereas the computer industry has always focused on product sales. Building a sustained relationship with a customer takes a completely different mind-set. For instance, ASPs can monitor how customers use the software, and if they spot something that needs changing, they can do it right away. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.