The Software Providers's View, Part 1: Is There an ASP in Your Future?

Whatever happens in trucking technology, trucking software makers deal -- and interface -- with it first. So Truckinginfo.com recently asked four major truckload software executives their take on today’s hot technologies. Today’s subject: ASPs.
Is the ASP model fulfilling its promise?
Only one of the four top truckload software companies sees current trucking ASPs as truly successful. Yet three of the four are considering a new generation of remote computing services.

ASPs offer the use of software remotely, usually over the Internet. As an example, think of Mapquest, which creates routes or displays maps at your request. Instead of maps, a trucking ASP provides your company's operational software. Both the application and the data are housed by the ASP on their server. Still, you can call it across the Internet to your computer screen and work with it at any time, paying only for that use.
Innovative Computing Corp., the Oklahoma City-based granddaddy of truckload software providers, has been hosting an ASP version of its Innovative Enterprise Software for the IBM AS/400 called IES Access since 1998. According to Kristy Conerly, General Manager of Innovative, the ASP is delivering on its promise.
"Our ASP solution has been generating a lot of interest, and it's doing very well for us right now," said Conerly. "So obviously the future of the ASP is already here."
Tom McLeod, president of McLeod Software, Birmingham, Ala., is less enthusiastic.
Since the beginning of this year, McLeod Software has hosted an ASP version of its LoadMaster software through TruckersB2B.com, the web-based buying cooperative.
"Actually, we've seen the interest level pretty low relative to the market as a whole," McLeod said.
According to Canadian software provider Maddocks Systems of Vancouver, British Columbia, interest in the ASP version of its TruckMate software has been restricted to small players.
"We have an ASP," said Maddocks Vice President Randall Burrell. "We just don't have anyone who really wants to use it."
What's the problem?
"What I'd say works against the ASP model is that hardware has gotten so cheap and so reliable these days, it can actually be cheaper to put in a server that is cheaper than firing up your full-time lease line or Internet connection. So there's less incentive there," McLeod explained.
McLeod also said that some trucking companies have a quintessentially American point of view toward "renting' software from an ASP. "They don't want to rent," said McLeod, "they want to own."
Burrell believes Internet reliability is problem.
"You don't want to bet your business on it, because that's exactly what you're doing," said Burrell.
"So what if you can't get a bill out for two days? That's not the end of the world. But if you can't dispatch your truck or do a customer trace because of a problem with a junction box in Kansas City or wherever, you're in a world of hurt," he said.
Then there's TMW Systems of suburban Cleveland, Ohio, which does not offer an ASP. TMW president Tom Weisz said we should be talking less about ASPs than xSPs, in which "x" can stand for a number of service alternatives.
When it comes to the next wave in remote computing for trucking, three of the four software leaders are remarkably in synch. They expect many trucking companies to adopt remote services as a way to reduce computer hardware maintenance responsibilities and IT (Information Technology) staffs.
Conerly said Innovative has recognized this desire among medium to large carriers. So rather than simply host their own application, Innovative might take responsibility for a customer's entire computer operation, providing a customer's major applications remotely. The customer would have no server or central computer at his location, only desktop terminals and perhaps some PCs to run strictly local programs such as Microsoft Office.
"That's our next phase going forward," said Conerly.
McLeod said the idea might be better expressed as "outsourcing,"
"A customer might say, okay, take my computer and keep it at your place. Run my application that I paid the license fee for. Run it at your place. Guarantee x amount of up time, make my backups for me and reduce my system administration," said McLeod.
TMW's Weisz sees the same benefits possible without separating a customer from his software or his hardware. Weisz sees the IT department as the remote element called an MSP, or Management Service Provider.
According to Weisz, the hardware and software remain at the customer's place of business and run normally, but the MSP monitors the customer's system from afar.
"They can monitor the hardware performance as well as the operating system, the database structure and everything else. And in that way, they can predict failures," said Weisz, who sketched a scene in which an MSP person arrives unbidden at the customer's door to replace a hard drive.
"The customer says, 'but there's nothing wrong with my hard drive.' The MSP answers, 'I know there isn't, but unless I change it, there will be,'" said Weisz.
While the remote services described by Conlerly and McLeod have yet to emerge in the trucking world, Weisz said he has seen the remote MSP in action.
"I know of one company I just visited, and they're having tremendous success," he said. "It's less than a trend, but it's the beginnings of one."

Monday: Part 2 -- Sunset for EDI? For the complete software provider's perspective, see the October issue of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine.