Lotus Delivers Collaborative Software Services to Meet ASP Market Needs; ASPs and their Customers to Benefit from Reduced Time-to-Web for Collaborative Applications

Business Wire, Sept 11, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2000

IBM's Lotus Development Corp. today announced its collaborative services initiative for Application Service Providers (ASPs), including technology, pricing, and business partner programs to deliver and extend the powerful collaborative capabilities of Lotus Notes, Domino, QuickPlace, Sametime, and LearningSpace to a new and expanded range of users. Through its offerings, understanding and commitment to the ASP model, Lotus has made it easier for ASPs to host and deliver collaborative technology solutions as a service to their customers. Lotus also announced the shipment of its ASP Solution Pack.

Present at today's launch, representatives of several leading Lotus ASP and ISV partners, including Sun Microsystems, iemagine, Encanto Networks Inc., Interliant, netASPx, Berbee and Sonera, extended their commitment to the company's ASP strategy.

"We intend to be the leading supplier of collaborative software-as-a-service by providing our ASP and ISV partners with the technology, services and programs they need to speed deployment and foster success for their hosted application efforts," said Lotus President and CEO Al Zollar. "Behind this strategy is our commitment to deliver a full range of technologies and programs that are flexible enough to support the wide range of ASP business models."

Collaborative Services, Bringing Relationships to the ASP Marketplace

IDC estimates that ASP revenue derived from collaborative applications will swell from $160 million (US) in 2000 to an estimated $2 billion (US) by 2004. As a leading provider of collaboration tools and infrastructures, Lotus helps enable customers to create, manage and foster the strong relationships necessary for effective e-business B2B solutions. An early entrant in the ASP market, Lotus has long been committed to working with ASPs and today detailed a two-pronged strategy to help address ASP customers' growing needs for deploying collaborative and real-time solutions.

Lotus is making its Domino server, Notes client, QuickPlace, Sametime, LearningSpace, SmartSuite, Domino Workflow, and Mobile Services for Domino products available as customizable, dedicated server solutions. Currently, any customers participating in the IBM/Lotus Passport Advantage Program can purchase Lotus client or server licenses and then have the products, or their own Domino and Domino-based applications, hosted and managed via a Lotus service provider business partner.

Lotus is also addressing the needs of small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs ) -- one of the largest growing market segments for hosted models, according to Giga Research -- and departments within enterprises. By providing "ready-to-rent" applications through the Lotus ASP Solution Pack, Lotus is delivering a second-generation integrated hosting platform that is able to meet immediate needs for producing hostable applications, and to speed an ASP's time to market for its own custom offerings, with efficiencies, pricing and licensing models that can help minimize its total cost of ownership.

ASP Solution Pack Provides Ready-to-Rent Applications; Reduces Time to Market for ASPs and Customers

ASPs can leverage the Lotus ASP Solution Pack platform as a base for delivering collaborative software -- including mail, calendaring, teamware, real time awareness and instant messaging -- into new markets to reach more customers and decrease administrative costs. ASPs can complement the base offering of Lotus collaborative applications with a wide variety of third-party ISV Web solutions developed on Lotus Domino or IBM WebSphere application server platforms. The Solution Pack platform allows an ASP to maintain multiple, independent copies of the same application for several companies or communities securely on a shared server.

The ASP Solution Pack, with the underlying Lotus Hosting Management System, can track the number of users and/or the usage of applications, allowing ASPs to offer customers flexible pricing schemes. ASPs can further help control administrative costs through adoption of end user self-administration features. (See accompanying Lotus Hosted Solutions Portfolio and Lotus ASP Solution Pack fact sheets for additional information on hosted products.)

Flexible Pricing Models Meet ASP Needs

In response to ASP demand for flexible pricing schemes, Lotus is introducing unique, usage-based subscription pricing for ASPs designed to address their new business models. Lotus offers ASPs a "pay-as-you-grow," usage-based model where ASPs pay only as they acquire monthly customers for applications running on Lotus platforms:

- Monthly, per-user pricing for self-service hosted applications: Lotus enables ASPs to deliver a collection of self-service applications via shared servers and, via the Lotus ASP Solution Pack, automatically track and pay for those licenses based on the number of activated users per month. (See ASP Solution Pack Fact Sheet for additional pricing details.)