What Are The Benefits of Choosing An ASP?

There are many reasons why so many school districts choose to work with an ASP (Application Service Provider). In fact, our Staff Development Management System, Electronic Registrar Online, is so well received by school districts in part because it is an ASP. Here are some of the benefits that working with an ASP can offer you:

• Immediate access to the latest technology -- without the expense, administrative responsibilities or risks associated with maintaining an in-house IT infrastructure

• Improved ability to focus resources on key issues facing the school district, rather than technology concerns

• "Fast-track" system implementation of new applications and technologies - with minimal impact to the school districts pre-existing infrastructure

• Quick and easy application scalability to immediately accommodate changing requirements

• Access to comprehensive, industrial strength disaster recovery, security, back-up, and support services

• Reduced total cost of IT ownership

• Greater predictability of IT costs

• Increased IT flexibility

An ASP is a highly effective method for school district to simplify their business and IT requirements even while improving their systems. Freed from the necessity of maintaining complex technical infrastructures and updating locally-hosted systems, school districts (including their IT departments) can focus efforts on other initiatives that make the best use of their time and resources.

Here are a few misconceptions that organizations typically have related to an ASP:

"I won't have access to my data." Not true. In fact a properly delivered ASP should be virtually seamless to the users providing the same type of access to data as locally hosted systems How is this? Data can be shared through interfaces that utilize XML and web services technologies via secure connections. These interfaces would act identical to interfaces between internal systems.

"It's not secure. Sensitive information will be floating around the internet." Again, not true. An ASP often provides better security than internally hosted systems. This is because an ASP is typically provided by a company or organization hosting hundreds or even thousands of users. System security is their business. Their business model creates a much larger need to provide a high-level of security as such a large number of users (and their entire business) are reliant upon that security. This large number of users allows the provider to spread the cost of industrial-strength security over all users.

"The system won't be flexible; I cannot control the system." A common mistake is to assume, because you will work off the same system as other users, the system will be exactly the same for each user. Software and systems providers could never get away with this. School districts each have unique requirements. ASP systems accommodate this in various way. The most popular is to allow for a wide range of custom parameters to be set in order to configure the system to the particular school districts requirements.

"An ASP costs more because there is an annual subscription fee." This depends on the costs of the alternatives. However school districts often overlook hidden costs with internal systems including manual processes, internal IT support labor, and periodic hardware / software updates. These are costs that can typically be avoided completely with an ASP solutions. For more information on the return on investment associated with our ASP solutions, please contact us at salessupport@eschoolsolutions.com

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