Business-to-business eCommerce of Information Systems: Two cases of ASP-to-SME eRental

Enterprises today can "eRent" Information Systems (ISs), through the Internet, from Application Service Providers (ASPs). This emerging IS "eRental" concept is a special case of Business-to-Business eCommerce, where the product is an IS application and the business units engaged in commerce are an enterprise and an ASP. For small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), IS eRental might be an appealing solution to complex and costly IT acquisition and implementation. It is yet too early to assess what the future holds for ASP and how far-reaching ASP implications could be for IS delivery and management in the future economy. It is possible however, to focus on and learn from ASP case studies. This paper briefly describes Net-POS and Silverbyte, two Israeli software vendors for the hospitality industry whose members, mostly SMEs, confront with great difficulty the high cost of owning, maintaining, and managing the state-of-the-art IS infrastructure required in the Internet era. These vendors have recently entered the ASP arena by adding an IS eRental option to their for-sale IS offerings. The case studies are followed by a discussion of the new ASP concept as well as of possible directions for research on ASP-to-SME eRental.