Last train to bCentral: why ASPs' paranoia just intensified

Research houses have made some bold predictions about users renting software as a service, and publications have devoted a large amount of column space picking up on these reports of a 'paradigm shift'. (Yes, silicon.com too stands guilty as charged - although we'd never use the phrase 'paradigm shift').

But write about a fledgling ASP industry paranoid about failure, and those same companies might just start feeling uncomfortable. We don't hear marketing directors in the ASP game voicing their concerns too often, but mark our words: there are plenty of providers more than a little worried that users just won't buy the concept, at least not in sufficient numbers.

Dare it be said, but think ASP doom instead of boom.

Against this backdrop, it's likely the development of a service called bCentral will have everyone involved in ASP talking. You see, bCentral is Microsoft's own ASP offering, and one which threatens to compete with dozens of start-up ASPs, many of whom have built their businesses at least partly on providing Microsoft software such as Exchange and the Office suite.

Following a meeting last month in Seattle involving several ASPs and Microsoft, the Israeli Nasdaq-listed provider Commtouch seems to have emerged as the software giant's preferred bCentral partner in Europe. Good news for Commtouch, if that is indeed true.

Now take those other ASPs, the same ones still struggling to get their businesses going. Take a respected provider and Microsoft partner such as the UK's NetStore, which promises to take care of companies' messaging needs by laying on Exchange services. Doesn't look pretty, does it? (NetStore isn't commenting.)

The development of bCentral in Europe is by no means finalised, and there may yet be room for major vendors providing their software indirectly through ASPs and directly themselves, as an 'inhouse ASP'.

Certainly there is a good case for the ASP model. But let's not hope the trailblazers in this relatively new industry get the rug pulled from underneath them.