Idea paying off at long last

By ADAM GIFFORD

When the idea of apps on tap or the "application service provider" surfaced at the height of the dotcom boom, it was quickly dismissed as industry hype.

Few companies were willing to trust someone else to deliver their mission-critical applications over the internet, and indeed the task of making applications "ASP-ready" seemed beyond many vendors.

Fast-forward three years and the reality seems to be catching up to the hype, to the benefit of an emerging cluster of local software developers.

Roger Cockayne, chief executive of Hosting and Datacentre Services (HdS), formerly Hitachi New Zealand, said demand for hosted applications was taking off.

"That side of the business has grown from nothing to $30,000 a month in six months without really trying," Cockayne said.

Most of the hosted applications which come under the new HdS Business Fabric umbrella are New Zealand made, with the exception of Leaders Online, a corporate governance tool which came out of Telstra Australia, and Microsoft applications, which are part of the product portfolio sold by consulting firm Deloittes.

Applications include PayGlobal's human resources and payroll software, Exonet financial and business management software, call centre systems from AM PM Calling, and the PlanWise project and portfolio management tool.

The latest application to be added is the Rex intranet and internet content management solution, which is also available through GDC's iVASP hosting service.

HdS hosts five of PayGlobal's New Zealand customers - Christchurch Airport, Enza, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, refrigeration firm Skope and Pacific Brands - and 10 of its Australian customers.

Cockayne said HdS was able to run a successful hosting business because it was not competing with the application vendors and just provided the infrastructure.

Rex chief executive David Inggs said the company had 15 hosted customers - where the customer bought the licences outright but accessed the software remotely - and three on ASP licensing, where they paid by the month.

"We want to sell software while customers now want the full solution, so we partner so they can get the hardware, software, licensing, database, security, networking and the full infrastructure in one package."