ASP Pulse:CRM Vendors Should Look To ASPs

That is the message from market research firm Datamonitor, which Tuesday released a study that says ASPs are expected to generate $431 million for CRM vendors by 2005.

It is generally regarded that in comparison to other channel partners, ASPs currently bring in the least amount of revenue for CRM vendors. The study shows, however, that revenue resulting from ASP sales will increase by 128 percent by 2005, particularly in the small- and midsize-business market.

The share of ASP revenue derived from CRM applications is also expected to increase to 21 percent in 2005 from 14 percent in 2000.

"The cost of implementing a CRM strategy has been a significant barrier to entry for customers in the [small- and midsize-enterprise] sector. The ASP channel will remove this barrier, offering key benefits to SMEs such as reduced cost, ease of integration, savings on IT labor and access to new applications, " said Robin Goad, a Datamonitor analyst, in a prepared statement.

In 2000, CRM vendors garnered about $7 million from ASPs.

High growth areas from CRM solutions are projected to be government, entertainment and Internet retailing industries, Datamonitor says.

E-Business In A Box

Web hosting and Internet service provider CI Host this month plans to introduce an e-commerce package at Spring Internet World.

Called Business in a Box, the solution comes with prepackaged tools for Web maintenance and search engines. It also includes a free year of Web hosting and a free merchant account.

The tools include epicRealm's content-caching and content-generation technology, Network Solutions' domain name registration services and CardService International's merchant accounts and payment technology.

CI Host promises to have e-commerce sites up and running within seven days.

ASP Pulse is a daily news source for providers of hosted services. If you have any news to share, or just want to give us your take on the ASP market, call me at 781-839-1249 or send an e-mail to ctorode@cmp.com.