Johannesburg, 17 Jul 2002
Unisys Africa has signed an ASP (application service provision) agreement with Hands-On for sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. The companies will provide ERP (enterprise resource planning) functionality based on the Danish joint Axapta/Navision platform.
Navision, recently acquired by Microsoft, a premier Unisys partner, is focused on the mid-market, while Axapta concentrates on the higher end.
The ASP will run on Unisys hardware using Microsoft`s operating system and database. Internet giant UUNet has provided the connectivity and will host Unisys` servers. Unisys will manage the deployment and field customer queries at its Sunninghill-based call centre.
Globally, more than 350 customers have deployed the ASP offering. Locally, the partners will target auditing companies, parastatals and government departments - organisations that require the combination of functionality the ASP provides.
Ted Wood, manager, S&T division at Unisys Africa, says: "This ASP agreement is of great significance to the local market as it reduces the time, costs and effort required for customers to deploy a fully-fledged ERP system. Customers do not need the skills typically associated with an ERP implementation.
"Also, the fact that it is running in an ASP configuration means it costs significantly less, is easier to use and is implemented more quickly than traditional ERP systems."
The system is particularly suited to auditors, says Wood, as they gain easy access to reporting information because they are on the same system as their clients.
Crucial to the acceptance of the system has been the implementation of pilot projects.
"Pierce and Gampel, an auditing company, went live in April and Access Telecommunication Services went live at the beginning of May," says Johann Myburgh, CEO of Hands-On.
The pilot projects, he says, will serve to allay fears of a repeat of the ASP market failure two years ago, iron out any kinks in the system, and serve as demonstration sites.
The partners have adopted a shared risk model which, Myburgh says, goes a long way in addressing the capital problems associated with ASPs in the past.
"ASP failed in previous years because companies invested large amounts of capital in the underlying infrastructure, but battled to sign enough customers to recoup their investments.
"Users were also reassured by having their servers onsite. If something went wrong they could act immediately to correct it and they felt security was less of a risk."
Myburgh, who took a leading role in the establishment of one of the first ASPs in the country, says the fact Hands-On already has two clients is proof that the concept is being accepted by business in the region. The previous ASP took 18 months to get off the ground and was not ultimately successful.
"ASPs had to own their own hardware, the entire data centre, which included the software and skills necessary to run it," says Myburgh. "They invested millions of dollars in building their own infrastructure and then they could not sell the service fast enough."
The structure of the partnership sees all parties supplying services and equipment on a per-user basis. As new customers come through the doors, the overall system can seamlessly be expanded in line with current capacity-on-demand market trends.
Myburgh says this will make it possible for customers to take full advantage of all the cost benefits of the ASP model, while the partnership will avoid the unnecessary expense that crippled many previous ASPs.
"We have a shared-risk model that will see our partners putting in hardware and services as these are required and recouping their investments on a per-user basis," he says.
While stressing that the size of the local market is currently difficult to determine, Myburgh says Gartner figures that suggest between 65% and 85% of businesses will make use of the ASP model in the next five years based on the fact that it will save them capital outlay, give reason for optimism.
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