On May 30th GOriver became one of the first companies to partner with Cervalis, a dynamic new Internet Provider specializing in hosted solutions for discerning clients.

Several hundred people attended the Cervalis launch at their new state-of-the-art Internet Data Center in Wappingers Falls, a town in New York's Hudson Valley. Governor Pataki, Governor of the State of New York, gave the keynote address. Local political leaders spoke, as did Michael Boccardi, the president of Cervalis.

The day's activities also included the signing of the GOriver/Cervalis contract, by Michael Schoder, president of GOriver, and Cervalis executives. This agreement inaugurates a new era for GOriver. The products GOriver has been developing, such as the BrokerBase property posting and management software, are all designed for the growing Internet-hosted applications environment. The partnership with Cervalis strategically positions GOriver to provide those applications and to host and manage those applications in Cervalis' preeminently secure environment.

GOriver is now able to provide full-service application hosting services for those products already developed (e.g., BrokerBase) as well as for those in development. Products in development include applications designed for specific mass markets (e.g., the VirtualContacts contact management system), and custom applications for GOriver's expanding base of satisfied clients. Via its alliance with Cervalis' redundant network infrastructure, state-of-the-art security controls, and redundant power distribution feeds, GOriver is able to ensure 24/7 application availability, and previously unrealized levels of customer confidence.

 Recent research by Zanthus suggests that small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) will increasingly choose ASPs to provide, host, and maintain their applications.

Today, xSPNews quoted Jennifer Lackey of Zanthus as saying that "…the biggest challenge has stemmed from the fact that so few SMBs have access to reliable, broadband Internet access.

" The article also reported that AMR research has estimated that the enterprise ASP market will grow to $4.7 billion by 2004.

The Zanthus report concluded that "substantial cost savings" would drive SMBs to hire ASPs. The ASP model would provide a financially viable alternative to in-house client-server configurations. And when compared with an ASP, the client server configuration would also have slowed a company's time to market.

Years before the publication of these findings, GOriver had already anticipated the market's demand for more good ASPs. GOriver positioned itself as a key provider of DSL broadband Internet access in combination with its emerging portfolio of reliable ASP solutions, thereby both creating and effectively delivering applications for its customers.

 In its June 4th issue CRAIN"S ran a front page article headlined "Telecoms face high-speed extinction." This attention-grabbing pun-wielding headline captured attention, even though it may not have attracted clients to the apparently shrinking market for high-speed Internet access.

The market for DSL isn't shrinking. If anything it will increase as more and more applications are web-hosted. But delivering DSL to the many clients who want and need it has not proven to be easy. The DSL marketplace is shaky.

The article made the point that: "Analysts predict that most of the firms providing high-speed Internet service…probably will not survive." It went on to say that as providers go out of business "…they may leave tens of thousands of customers without their speedy Internet connections for weeks or months." And customers have been left in the lurch as some of the larger DSL providers have closed up shop.

GOriver has been flowing against that tide. GOriver continues to provide SDSL High-Speed Internet Access and T1 lines to its customers, in many cases bundling that service together with some of its web-hosted applications. In fact, GOriver continues to stress as key the need for high-speed Internet access as the means of satisfactorily delivering its diverse portfolio of applications.

In discussing the plight of smaller DSL providers, the author of the article states that: "The market prefers companies that offer a broad array of services, such as super-speedy data delivery, Web hosting and conferencing, and business software applications." These are among the very services that GOriver was launched to provide. GOriver continues to provide them, while also continuing to expand its other products and services.

 Recent announcements in leading trade publications strengthen the realization that GOriver has always been at the forefront of those leading the way onto the Internet.

In an article by Leon Erlanger in the March 15th issue of INTERNET WORLD he describes the four main principles guiding the way in which the Internet will be used in the coming years:

• "The Internet will become your personal network, housing all your applications, data, and preferences. Instead of buying software in shrink-wrapped form, your organization will rent it as a hosted service."
• "…You will have 'anywhere, anytime' access to your data and applications on the Internet…"
• "You will have many new ways to interact with your application data…"
• "…You will be connected to…a 'constellation' of computers and services, which will be able to exchange and combine objects and data to provide you with exactly the information you need."

Erlanger makes these points in the course of describing Microsoft's new .Net initiatives.

But he could more accurately have been describing GOriver's approach from its inception. GOriver's applications, including its popular BrokerBase, have always been designed to exist in a web-hosted environment. GOriver has always conceived of itself as a developer of services for its customers, programs that are inherently expandable and upgradeable, as opposed to a set of closed objects on a disc.

GOriver's marketing manager said, "Anywhere-anytime-anyhow access is more than a motto at GOriver. It's not just a promise or a look toward the future. It perfectly describes the availability of GOriver's services today. GOriver's satisfied customers are constantly proving ease of interactivity. And the 'constellation' of computers and services might better be described as the universe of services that GOriver has been developing, from the beginning, and with its customers always in mind."