Book Brief: Netsourcing

Thomas Kern, Mary Cecelia Lacity and Leslie P. Willcocks

Prentice Hall PTR, April 2002

300 pages, $34

It's a simple question. If you can outsource everything from accounting to your sales force, why can't you outsource your business applications over the Net? The answer, according to the authors, IT professors all, is that you can. The concept of delivering business applications as a service, or "apps on tap," used to be called application service provision (ASP). But that term, the authors contend, is now too narrow. Today, customers are netsourcing entire business processes, such as human resource management and accounting, and remotely hosting and managing their own applications. The authors discuss the key variables, from finding the right provider to managing the relationship. And thankfully, their arguments affect both customers and suppliers.