More than eight months after HP announced an e-services initiative for the HP 3000 customer, a single application is running in the HP datacenter where apps-on-tap go to live.

HP is providing space on its own HP 3000s in a datacenter located in Boise, Idaho for the apps-on-tap. The HP IT operations and system management staff is responsible for maintaining application availability in the apps-on-tap plan. So far only the pilot application from Telenomics, PWARE/3000’s call accounting solution, is actually running at the datacenter.

Alvina Nishimoto, the R&D Program Manager for the Internet and Interoperability Solution Team at the e3000 division (CSY), said there’s been a few delays in getting apps-on-tap to serve data. Technical details of the arrangement have been simple compared to the complexity of working out a new business model for software companies.

“We’re finding that every different application has a different business model that we have to work with,” Nishimoto said. “The concept is pretty similar, but how you price it and work with it varies. We’re finding it’s very application-specific.”

CSY is also spending time doing qualification of the partners it is pursuing for apps-on-tap. HP will receive part of the revenue in an apps-on-tap sale for services. The new relationship is the closest HP has ever had with its 3000 software companies, known as ISVs.

“We intend to enter into a long-term relationship with a lot of these ISVs we’re working with, so we have to look at the overall picture and our long-term strategy to make sure everything’s going to work together,” Nishimoto added. “We want to make sure the value-add that HP provides makes sense for what they are looking for.”

HP draws up a Service Level Agreement with the ISV as it starts an apps-on-tap relationship. HP doesn’t set a defined end date for service in an apps-on-tap deal, other than a one-year minimum commitment.

The CSY manager suggested a greater number of sealed deals for e3000 apps-on-tap would be announced around this year’s HP World conference in the fall. “We’re in a number of discussions so far, but nothing is firm,” she said. “There’s quite a big funnel of prospects.” ISVs of all sizes are in the prospect list, she said, not just smaller companies.

“We view this very much as a partner program that enables them to offer this additional service,” Nishimoto said. HP works with the ISV on initial pricing to get a customer’s commitment. Once a customer is on board, specifics of the service agreement can get ironed out.

Those companies who do sign up will have their 3000s managed by HP’s own computer organization. HP’s IT operations recently merged with the HP Services organization run by Tom Ashburn. One objective of the reorganization lets HP deploy its own IT professionals to provide services for partnerships such as the apps-on-tap initiative, where HP hosts applications on its hardware, Nishimoto said.

“Even though IT has been focused on internal needs, it will become part of our capability to serve external customer needs,” Nishimoto said. “It will roughly double the size and capacity of HP Services’ IT infrastructure. This will allow HP Services to better serve the IT outsourcing needs of large global customers. They’re hoping to leverage more of the resources available in our IT organization.”

“We typically get into an apps-on-tap relationship when there is an actual customer,” Nishimoto said. “Depending on the size of the customer, there could be a dedicated e3000 system, or it could be shared on a larger system.”

Bandwidth of network connections can vary as well. “Lots of the applications we are looking at are purely Internet connections, in which case it just comes across the Internet. Others rely on a dedicated line. We have the capability to go to just about any size on those, depending on the volume of data we expect to come across.”

A major focus of the technical specification has been security, both for customers as well as HP. “It’s extremely important to the people who run the HP datacenter,” Nishimoto said. “It’s a great concern to HP in general, because if we don’t implement it right, it could let you into the rest of our network.”

The technical resource is not the most crucial service supplied in the only current apps-on-tap participant, Nishimoto explained. “Our main area that we’re helping out in is channel development,” she said. “This PWARE solution has big possibilities across a lot of customers. The main thing is that we need to find the right channel to sell it into.”

In the PWARE application, call accounting is often a requirement of companies purchasing PBX systems, according to Nishimoto. “We do a lot of channel development,” she said. “This leads us to talk with the PBX vendors, or at least their distributors.” CSY has been discussing apps-on-tap with Nortel and Lucent in North America.