"The intangible benefits include the ability to coordinate online withmultiple parties, thus allowing us to have a more efficient workingrelationship with our external stakeholders," says Tanikawa.

Before it used Crimson-Logic, Sony Logistics had a paper-based processthat started from a print-out from its host systems to a manualfreight consolidation process, finally culminating in multiple enddocuments being created. This resulted in duplication of work, and, insome instances, lost documents as hard copies were passed from onedepartment to another. Now it can have a single officer process acustomer shipping instruction from start to finish.

It isn't just the ASPs that are winning converts. MSPs are capturingtheir fair share of believers as well. Kent Yap, chief technologicalofficer of Fairex International Financial Systems Pte Ltd, usesNational Computer Systems Pte Ltd's (NCS') co-location services topower its IT infrastructure as well as its security monitoringservices, for its business in Singapore. It uses SingTel's and NTT'sMSP services in Hong Kong and Tokyo, respectively.

"The cost would be higher if we bought the space and hardware to houseour infrastructure. We need our applications to be highly available,24 by 7, and to constantly deliver high bandwidth. We don't want tohave an electricity generator running 24-hour support, or anair-conditioning system - that would cost us an arm and a leg," hesays.

Despite these positive reviews, customers who spoke with CIO Asia aremore comfortable having reputable ASPs and MSPs providing theirdesired IT services.