ASP has come a very long way. I have been selling ASP licenses with newtron since 1999 and it took long hours to explain the benefits of an outsourced service provider. ASP is somehow like VoIP that was there since 1996 but largely failed due to the same reasons:

- lack of bandwidth
- lack of understanding
- lack of reliability of the network
- large providers insisting on old-school solutions (PBX or classic licenses)
- lack of costumer education

Now startupskills links to this article from InformationWeek. Maybe the time s ripe now...