Sol 6 loses Yelland
Director Lindsay Yelland has resigned from Solution 6 due to a possible conflict of interest', stemming from a new, and as yet, undisclosed business opportunity. Yelland played an important role for Solution 6, from his dealings with the company while with Telstra, through to his recent interim position as CEO, when Chris Tyler left the company under controversial circumstances in May. Yelland's brief stint as CEO came to an end when former Star City Holdings CEO Neil Gamble took over the reigns last month. Yelland then informed the company that he would not continue as chief operating officer, the role he undertook under Chris Tyler. The board invited him to stay on as a non-executive director, which he turned down to take up a new business opportunity.
Cross-Tasman ASP
Human resources and payroll ASP Allegiance Systems has formed a strategic alliance with New Zealand software vendor, TimeMaster Systems. Allegiance has secured an exclusive contract to deploy TimeMaster's Internet-based human resources program, PayGlobal. This application handles a business' payroll, time and attendance, rostering and labour scheduling. PayGlobal is distributed via an ASP model to reduce the cost of payroll processing. TimeMaster already has a client base of 600 customers in the pacific region, concentrating on the healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transport verticals. Allegiance already serves the needs of around 135,000 employees in the Australian public health sector, and under the agreement will hold exclusive distribution rights for PayGlobal in the Australian healthcare sector.
ASPs all hype?
The hype behind the ASP phenomenon has led many IT opinion-makers to doubt whether it could achieve success in real business terms. This year, Gartner Group forecast the majority of today's ASPs would not survive the intense market consolidation the Internet is experiencing. But a new report by Merv Langby, services analyst at IDC Australia, suggests that the hype exists for a good reason. Langby claims that the expectations of pioneering customers have been met and even exceeded, and the majority of these users believe that their costs have been justified by the results. According to Langby, the real challenge for ASPs lies in getting the message out into the market, and we can expect the hype to continue while the service providers try to educate the market.
