Last Edited: 07-17-2004

ASPCON

Application Service Provider CONvention
Orange County Convention Center

Orlando, Fla.  May 23-25, 2000

 


10,000 delegates were registered for this conference. Attendees were split among 3 listed conferences (ISPCON, ASPCON, and CLEC Expo conference). Judging from the exhibits, ISPCON had the most space and CLEC Expo was the smallest. ISPCON started 4 yrs ago. ASPCON started 2 yrs ago.

I attended ASPCON to get a feel of what the ASP industry is like. Basically, ASPs are the year 2000 version of the mainframe. Instead of accessing software on your PC, you connect to a server over the internet and access software resident on the server. This is a business service, not residential. 

There are several ASP web sites.  http://www.aspcon.com and http://aspindustry.org are two. VGs from this show are available at

http://ispcon.internet.com/spring2000/presentations.html (username: ISP2kvip  password: ISP2k71374) I noticed that VGs from the early morning sessions were not available.

5-23-2000 Tues. 9:00am ISP Kickoff

 3COM Speaker: Irfan Ali, Senior VP & General Manager.
Building the IP networks of the future.3 changes:
1) Significance of the internet: the medium of life. Just now gaining popularity outside of the USA.
2) Trend to deregulation... Telecom act of 1996 gave CLECs...now global concept.. traditional entry barriers now lowering... 
     will see generic network service provider (no more Long Distance, wireless, etc.). Consumers will be better off.
3) IP as a technology (3 yrs ago ATM was better) IP is now the platform of choice for data, voice, FAX, and video. Expectations on existing IP networks are too high. Just transport now, later must be service capable. Why? 12-15 yrs ago in telco networks, services were tied to COs but IN came along (IN, IN2, AIN) and proposed separation of apps from the underlying networks (e.g., Class Services), SCE, modular service introduction. Today's IP networks are like pre-IN COs. Need a 3 layered network (proposed)
     3) Service Creation Layer
     2) Controllers & Network & Service Mgmt.
     1) Media Processing Layer
Slide showed Media Gateway Controller (Signaling Gateways)... looked like a standard Softswitch network level architecture diagram. Software, not hardware. Value is in the software.

IP access closer to the edge.Tier2: PSTN SS7 Signaling, IP based. 
Mgmt -> embedded-> element mgmt -> distributed mgmt -> service & network platform (manage service)
Tier3: Service Creation Layer: Network Centric Services (Basic Authentication) Examples: port wholesaling, grade of services (Voice & video limited resources) (ex. FAX over IP is big in Asia) unified messaging.

Asking for like minded vendors to develop to this vision (Softswitch IP network)

There were no questions taken after this plenary session. After the talk, I approached the front and asked the speaker how he felt JAIN-Parlay fit into his vision. I didn't get a useful answer.

5-23-2000 Tues. 10:25 ASPCON Keynote (~400 attendees)

Chairman & CTO Citrix Edward Iacobucci.  Left IBM from OS/2 group and started Citrix in 1989 "Software as a Service" Nasdaq CTXS.
Products: Windows applications servers, Unix (Solaris) application servers, video servers.
Indirect sales channels, OEM & industry partners. 1996-2000 high quarterly revenue growth.
"To make using an application as simple as making a telephone call"
Any user, Any device, "delivery of services" TV & radio programs ... telephony services
Black & Decker: Customers don't want 1/4" drills, they want 1/4" holes
Standard Interfaces: server based computing. devices are now simple applications. How to manage server farms? Single Image. see farm as one entity. As of  Sept99, over 250,000 Servers installed. Over 4,000,000 concurrent user ports....4 times as many as AOL  > 15M ICA users. As of May2000, >300,000 servers, 6M ports, 24M users installed in enterprises small, medium, large.
Typical customer is a Hotel (Holiday Inn). They were using PeopleSoft at headquarters. 
Changed in 1997. Now remote access to peoplesoft via "metaframe" over an Internet Service Provider. Why stop within the enterprise? 
1998: pilot programs... w/telcos, ISPs
1999: New industry: IBM, Compaq, SUN, Cisco, Citrix.....ASP Industry Consortium (14-300 members) Challenges are great!!
Showed 4 major layers: (we are not here yet)

1) Clients Computers, devices, appliances (simple like a TV. Can't take TV apart for a Sopranos update)
2) Delivery (was CO) Network Service Providers. Telcos, Wireless, ISPs, Cable. Direct Marketing Branded services, Customer Billing, connectivity, network mgmt.
3) Hosting (want fee based hosting) ASP Application Service Provider
4) Content (new rules) ISV Indep. software developers. knows about medical, car parts, etc.

Summary:

5-23-2000 Tues. 12:25pm to 12:50pm Lucent Luncheon

 Lucent sponsored a luncheon and gave what I felt was the best talk of the conference.
The slides and a video of the talk are available at http://www.lucent.com/serviceprovider/cybercarrier/aspsub.html

Talk was given by Mads Lillelund who talked about the "Economy of Light". It was basically a fiber broadband talk. The talk went very fast so I didn't get a chance to take many notes. Fortunately the slides and video are available.

5-23-2000 Tues. 1:30pm -2:10pm SUN Talk (~100 attendees)

 Elizabeth King (Group Manager) from SUN gave a talk on ASP/.com market development "App Hosting in the .com Economy".

The ASP idea falls directly into what SUN does. SUN workstations are connected to SUN servers over a LAN. The applications such as Netscape are shared and reside on the server.  SUN was very interested in pushing the ASP idea The speaker asked  "How many ASPs are in the room. There were fewer than 10 of the 100 or so attendees.

5-23-2000 Tues.  2:30-3:30pm

 Speaker from "Summit Strategies" talked about "7 rules on how to succeed as an ASP" The room overflowed. there were 100-150 people inside with 50 people in the hallway. The speaker was from a consulting company. It appears that a lot of people want to get into the ASP business.

5-23-2000 Tues.  4:30pm

 ASP pricing model presented by John Yin Daleen Technologies. Again a full house. (about 150 people). about 1/3 ASPs in the room.

5-24-2000 Wed.  9:00am Plenary

 Bill Poole a Microsoft VP in Audio/Video talked about streaming media. Digital Media

5-24-2000 Wed.  10-10:30am SUN Plenary

 I attended part of this session. SUN just gave ASPs definitions.

5-24-2000 Wed.  11:00am

 Connie DeWitt. Application Delivery Infrastructure. Concentric: Your Internet Service Provider.

5-24-2000 Wed.  11:15am

 I attended part of a session on Financing. presented by Updata Capital

5-24-2000 Wed.  1:30pm

 President's Panel. Paula Hunter (VP at cMeRun) is president of the ASP Industry Consortium. 500 members in 1 yr.
Corio, Agilera, cMeRun, XeVo, Oracle, Breakaway are some of the companies on the panel.

5-24-2000 Wed.  2:50pm

 Sprint's Arthur Chaykin, VP Strategic Development talked about "The e-Telco: not just a dumb pipe"

Q&A: Since Sprint is one of Lucent's biggest IN customers, I thought that it would be interesting to ask the speaker how he felt IN fit into his vision. Someone else beat me to the punch. I'm glad he did. The speaker tried to be polite, but obviously felt that IN was a completely different topic. He said "AIN? I don't know". Maybe a new signaling system (or SS7) could be used to confer with apps.

5-25-2000 Thurs.  9:05am

 John Davis (Davies) VP Intel

5-25-2000 Thurs.  10:05am

 Inktomi. 

5-25-2000 Thurs.  11:30am Microsoft Only Session

 Windows 2000. How to manage a server farm

Exhibits

 Anthony Clark