New ASP Section of CompTIA Announces ASPire Award Winners; ASP Industry Consortium Honors Best Practices in Application Service Provisioning

Business Wire, Dec 13, 2001

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 13, 2001

The new ASP section of CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, announced the winners of the second annual ASPire awards today at the Internet World Fall 2001 conference. Previously, the ASPire awards were presented by the ASP Industry Consortium (ASPIC), which recently joined forces with CompTIA.

The ASPire awards honor best practices in the application service provider (ASP) industry. Awards were given in five categories: Delivery and Enablement, Integration, Management and Operations, Service Satisfaction, and Innovative Technology-Wireless. Members of the ASPIC Best Practices Committee selected a total of fourteen finalists. An independent review board consisting of respected ASP industry experts from International Data Corporation (IDC), Gartner Dataquest, McKinsey & Co. and Enterprise Management Associates selected the five winners. The recipients of the second annual ASPire awards are:

    Delivery and Enablement- Hotel and Restaurant Systems (HRS) for
    rapidly deploying a property management system, NIMETA, into the
    Berlin Hotel.

    Integration- IBM for the successful integration of enterprise
    management systems into a single framework for Centerprise
    Services, a management solutions provider for the capital market
    organizations, resulting in significant reductions in the number
    of systems that need to be managed and maintained, as well as
    substantial savings in internal and external auditing
    expenditures.

    Innovative Technology, Wireless- MH2Technologies, Ltd. for
    providing an extensive wireless network system to Beazer Homes,
    one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S, enabling builders to
    better manage the home construction process by helping improve
    communication between employees in the field, suppliers, and the
    corporate office.

    Management and Operations- Multrix Group for implementing a
    centralized and standardized IT operations & management system
    which provides unified access and remote control across all
    offices/locations of Euroresins.

    Service Satisfaction- Yube, Inc. for successfully deploying an
    intelligent customer services application suite, providing a
    highly efficient, cost-effective way to provide 24x7 global
    customer services to Comstock Systems, an enterprise management
    software provider.

"The winners of this year's ASPire Awards have demonstrated the value proposition that the ASP model brings to the world of computing," said Paula Hunter, chairperson of the ASP section of CompTIA. "These are real-life success stories that validate the ASP model and facilitate the rapid, global adoption of the ASP model."

According to Meredith Whalen, vice president, ASP, BSP and Wireless Services at IDC, "For many companies, the ASP model has proven to be an effective way of improving efficiency, time-to-market and service levels. Additionally, we are seeing many organizations recognizing a positive five-year ROI on their ASP investments. The recipients of the ASPire awards highlight how ASP services can bring about many of these benefits to organizations."

Case study abstracts of the award recipients and finalists are available at www.allaboutasp.org.

    The independent Review Board, which chose the winners, included:

    -   Meredith Whalen, ASP, BSP and Wireless Services for IDC

    -   Ben Pring, principal analyst, IT Services at Gartner Dataquest

    -   Matthieu Pelissie du Rausas, principal for McKinsey & Co. in
        Paris

    -   Jeb Bolding, senior consultant at Enterprise Management
        Associates

    -   David Yew, lead analyst for IDC's ASP practice in Asia/Pacific

About CompTIA

CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, is a not-for-profit trade association providing the technology community standards in the areas of Internet-enabled service provision, e-commerce, vendor-neutral technical certification, CRM, public policy, workforce development and training. Representing the converging computing and communications market, CompTIA has more than 8,000 corporate members in 60 countries, and thousands of individual professional members. Almost half a million individuals worldwide have earned CompTIA certifications. More information is available at www.comptia.org and www.xspertise.com

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