Application service providing as part of intelligent decision support for supply chain management

A prominent trend in the software industry in the late 1990s was the development of the application service providing business model. Application service providers (ASP) offer their customers access to software applications via a network instead of installing them on the customer´s in-house computer system. ASPs host and manage applications from a central location and charge a fee for their services. Nevertheless, there are currently serious reservations and myths about what ASP can mean for companies and whether it can be applied in the context of business networks. In this paper we investigate the impact of this business model on decision support technologies in the supply chain management field. Furthermore, we provide a survey of some ASP issues regarding supply chain management software.