Oracle joins other ASPs to market services

Database vendor Oracle will today unveil the final part of its ASP (Application Service Provider) strategy, providing its applications for third parties to host for end users.

At present Oracle offers its applications direct to customers via its Business Online ASP service, to which it has signed up in excess of 100 customers. Now, it plans to work with other ASPs, allowing them to offer Oracle products to customers on a monthly rental basis.

Oracle said it has moved away from the direct model because it had learnt enough about the market to tailor an effective product for sale via the channel. It said the demand for services via the ASP model was massive, and said both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and very large companies had signed up for its business online model.

Tim Payne, head of data server marketing for Oracle EMEA, said the new offering would solve the problem for companies that wanted a fast rollout of expensive technology, without having to worry about finding the skilled staff to administer it.