Daniel Lampert Communications

Document #	IT-G-003976-02
Author	Daniel Lampert
Date Published	2002-05-10

The Expanding Services of Service Providers
Defining ISP, ASP, SSP, MSP, XSP

   Once again, technology is expanding. To the common acronyms ISP and ASP, the industry has added SSP, MSP and XSP. In this technology brief, we'll define both old and new acronyms and give you some perspective on the industry.

   First a recap. These acronyms have been around for a while:

   ISP: Internet Service Provider. In the beginning, this covered any and all possible Internet-related services. However, today, an ISP is usually in the business of providing dialup service, ISDN, DSL, cable modems, frame relay, T1 and higher bandwidth pipes, web site hosting, secure hosting, server co-location, and email service. Excluded is domain registration, which is left for ICANN-approved companies (who are referred to as registrars). Also, companies who provide bandwidth pipes only are sometimes referred to as "bandwidth providers", but this terms isn't widely used yet.

   ASP: Application Service Provider. Only a few years old, this niche is still in a state of flux. ASPs provide companies with software services. So, the software resides on the ASPs servers, and companies are only buying the right to use it via the Internet. As a result, no software nor software license is sold. Instead, companies pay a hosting or subscription price (along with a possible startup price) to use this B2B service.

Now, here are the new acronyms -- as heard by the author at national conferences in April and May 2002. Since these acronyms are very new, they might change in scope at any time.

   SSP: Storage Service Provider. A wide range of B2B services, including offsite storage of company datasets, secondary servers for databases and multimedia files, and solutions related to DR/BCP (Disaster Recovery and/or Business Continuity Planning). The business objective of an SSP is to provide competitively-priced large-scale storage that's hosted close to the Internet backbone.

   MSP: Managed Service Provider. This niche is driven by corporate America's need to outsource highly technical tasks to service companies. An MSP hosts large, complex web sites with a proactive spin. Their customers would suffer significant revenue losses if the site went down. So, proactive measures include high-grade backup systems and 24x7 monitoring and technical support. Plus, the MSP assumes responsibility for keeping the web site online with "five nines" (99.999% uptime). This last item is the most important reason why companies outsource to MSPs, because MSPs can specialize in keeping sites up and highly reliable, which would be very costly inside a company's IT department.

   XSP: X Service Provider. Given the growing number of service providers, this term represents the group of all service providers... the ones listed above, as well as new ones which may appear next month.

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