ASPGulf is to add Microsoft products to the portfolio of software that businesses can rent from it over the Internet. ASPGulf is hosting its applications on secured servers maintained by Emirates Internet & Multimedia (EIM).
In order to avoid the sort of service outages suffered recently by EIM’s customers, ASPGulf has established a direct parallel connection to the hosting servers.
Exact pricing of services is yet to be determined, but chief executive officer Duncan Watson confirmed that a 99.8% uptime guarantee will be built into contracts. Financial penalties will be incurred if ASPGulf fails to meet minimum service levels.
Although pricing isn’t yet available, Watson pledged that working with the application service provider (ASP) would be worthwhile for customers. ASPs function as outsourcing partners that allow businesses to rent software over secured network connections rather than having to install and maintain it themselves.
“ASPGulf offers Middle East businesses the opportunity to reduce their IT costs by 30-50% through outsourcing their software applications and IT infrastructure to our centrally managed application centre,” reckoned Watson.
Besides Microsoft Office and the Exchange e-mail application, ASPGulf also plans to host Great Plains’ business process management applications. Windows 2000 is ASPGulf’s server hosting platform.
