Edward Cone

The El Pollo Loco restaurant chain, best known for its quick-service chicken burritos, needed a little quick service itself on some new financial applications. By using an application service provider for its Lawson Software financial apps, the Irvine, Calif., company was able to meet a tight deadline, and do it under budget. Spun off from […]

Clarence Bastarache thought it would take him four weeks to choose an application service provider to run the SAP financial software he needed. It ended up taking eight. “I asked for a list of résumés for the people who might work on the project, interviewed them and even turned down one or two,” says the […]

Aubrey Chernick ignores the team of caterers setting up an after-hours buffet on the nearly deserted floor of the Georgia World Congress Center. The founder and chief executive of Candle loves to talk technology, and hes not about to leave his booth in mid-demo. “I go to different events and just enjoy discussing our vision […]

In an application services business where the losses keep piling up, Agilera founder and Chief Executive Paul Rudolph has put his Englewood, Colo., company in a position to win. The Electronic Data Systems veteran steered Agilera past the obstacles on which better-known enterprise-class application service providers have stumbled. Rudolph chose from the start to partner […]

Oracle is putting a new face on its software-as-a-service business by folding all of its online service offerings into the Oracle.com brand name. Oracle.com will function as a business information portal through which users can access integrated versions of the companys full line of applications. The brand will be supported by marketing and advertising campaigns […]

Jamcracker, the richly funded application services firm headed by Exodus Communications co-founder KB Chandrasekhar, is a blue-blooded company in what turns out to be a blue-collar business. While neither the company nor its young industry have matched expectations of spectacular growth, Jamcracker executives say they are still on course. “We were going to go 120 […]

Providing application services has become the business model that dares not speak its name, but investors arent giving up on managed software and services. “There is disdain in the marketplace about the label ASP, especially among financial analysts,” says Ritu Raj, chief executive of Chapter 2 e-services. Thats one reason the San Francisco company now […]

Robert “Boomer” Brown rounds a corner in IBMs data center in research triangle Park, N.C., and stops in front of the big boxes that power Web operations for retailer Victorias Secret. “This is our sexiest site,” says Brown, a program manager at IBM Global Services executive briefing center. The joke, of course, is that a […]

One promise of software as a service is to change the way companies pay for applications. So far, its just a promise, at least in the enterprise market served by legacy software vendors and their application service provider partners. Established software companies are in no hurry to move from booking fat, one-time license sales to […]

Microsofts planned $1.1 billion purchase of Great Plains Software will give the worlds largest software company an instant presence in the server application market, but Great Plains brings something extra to the deal. As one of the most aggressive software vendors in the application services business, Great Plains should help boost Microsofts application service provider […]

With 2001 expected to be a year of consolidation in the application services business, Agilera Chief Executive Paul Rudolph put his company ahead of the curve in December 2000 by acquiring another privately held application service provider, Applicast. Unlike many of the deals to come, this one involved two healthy companies. “We have a clear […]