Exo-net puts money on ASP

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Auckland accounting software company Exo-net 6 has bucked an industry trend by sticking with the application service provider (ASP) model in its latest release.

Chief executive officer David Mckee-Wright said Exo-net 6000, which was launched last week, was the first genuine ASP-deployed software designed for the small to medium enterprise market in New Zealand.

While Exo-net 6000 was not being offered by ASP companies such as Unisys, GDC or esolutions, Mr McKee-Wright said the package could be used internally by users such as accountants, franchise operations or geographically spread enterprises.

He thought ASPs had not adopted Exo-net 6000 because they had no idea when it came to ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.

"You can't just put an accounts package on a server and start charging $10 a month, it's not going to work."

A successful ASP deployment needed the right product, implementation and technical support.

"That's what I think has gone wrong - the marriage of these three hasn't come together. I think ASP will have a very long tail then take off."

Exo-net 6000, which replaces the Exo-net 3000 e-business application, had been developed by a team of up to 20 people over nine months at a cost of more than $5 million.

Mr McKee-Wright said Exo-net 6, which employs 70 people and now has 1000 customers mainly in Australasia, was self-funding and there had been no problems getting authorisation for the project from the Australian parent company, Solution 6.

While Exo-net 6000 featured a thoroughly revised user interface and a built-in report generator, most of the enhancements were focused on the underlying ASP-deployable architecture.