My workplace shares our street with a goodly amount of vacant class A office space. Apparently this space was left vacant by an Application Service Provider that went from being the largest technology employer in the county to bankruptcy court in record time. A few years ago, we were told ASPs were the way of the future - the desktop was dead, and a brave new era of applications served from the net was revolutionizing the way we worked and played. Now most of the revolutionaries are dead and buried, and the few remaining ASPs look like they’re trying to sell to large enterprise customers rather than you, me, and everyone. To me, the interesting question is, “Why?”

It’s because application service providers were trying to serve beef bouillon flavored jello.

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