What is an MSP and what makes it different from a good old ASP?
The answer involves a big bowl alphabet soup lane. Originally, ASPs were service providers that handled a few specific applications. You could outsource specific applications (like e-mail, database hosting, payroll, Web hosting, etc.) to an ASP who would run these applications for you on the ASP’s hardware and network. You gained access to these systems via the Internet. This model has had its successes and its failures. Now the industry has grown beyond simple application hosting to the point where providers are now actually hosting and managing complete business processes for their customers instead of just an application or two here and there. This has led to the industry inventing new abbreviations on an almost daily basis. There’s quite an interesting mix of abbreviations out there to pick from now. You’ve got the original ASP, then the MSPs (management or managed service providers), AIPs (application infrastructure providers), MIPs (management infrastructure providers), SSPs (sto
