Corio To Buy Qwest's ASP Assets

The struggling CyberSolutions unit was folded back into Qwest Communications International in February. At the time, a company spokeswoman said the move was a "natural evolution" since the ASP and Qwest's hosting division offered complementary services.

Many ASPs that had been hosting packaged applications, however, have closed down, shifted strategy or filed for bankruptcy. For example, USinternetworking, which offers a similar set of applications, filed for bankruptcy and later merged with Interpath after emerging from Chapter 11 and receiving an $81 million investment from Bain Capital.

For its part, Interliant opted to sell off its ERP and CRM practices.

CyberSolutions was formed in 1999 by KPMG and Qwest Communications. Last year, KPMG pulled out of CyberSolutions, leaving Qwest the sole owner.

Corio will take over the management of CyberSolutions' customers, but applications will still be housed in Qwest data centers, the companies said. Corio also plans to buy network services such as data center services, dedicated Internet access and storage solutions from Qwest.