The ABCs of AIPs
Will 'Application Infrastructure Provider' become a catch-all for managed hosting service firms? Or just another acronym wanna-be?

I'd just finished an interview with an executive at a well-known U.S. high-tech company, and was hurriedly reviewing my notes, trying to translate the most jargon-laden passages into something resembling English.
An astute media relations rep offered to help.
"I'll get you a tip sheet on the TLAs," she said sympathetically.
At the time, I thought the TLAs - Three Letter Acronyms - had gotten out of hand. Then I started covering telecom, where the TLAs are supported by a generous helping of Four-Letter Acronyms. Once you've mastered your DSLs, ASPs, ISPs and ISVs, you have to sort out your LATAs, RBOCs, ILECs, CLECs, DLECs, BLECs and any number of assorted LECs to come.
For those who believe this alphabet soup isn't thick enough, we bring you the AIP, short for Application Infrastructure Provider (AIP).
The new term has been coined by the Framingham, Mass. research firm IDC, which is a subsidiary of yet another acronym, IDG.
IDC describes an AIP as a provider that leverages an Internet data center infrastructure to deliver information technology and network services.
"The AIP will manage the core infrastructure for customers on an outsourcing, or managed services basis through a set of service offerings that involve the design, building, and operating of the network and IT systems," said David Tapper, program manager for IDC's Networked Infrastructure Management Services research.
"Essentially, the AIP will be a vertically integrated service provider that delivers these services across a multiple set of core capabilities involving networks, servers, applications, and storage,'' he added.
Sound familiar? It should if you've sat through discussions of managed services in any number of industry conferences in the past year. In putting a name (and a TLA) to the trend, IDC contends that the new breed of managed services providers are fundamentally different from the data center companies that preceded them.
A major challenge in succeeding in managed services is the need to be many things to many customers - if not all things to all customers. That will require partnerships, and the quality of those partnerships will be decisive, according to IDC's Tapper.
Successful AIPs "must have access to best- in-breed technologies and provide a set of product-agnostic service offerings,'' Tapper said. "For companies with ties to a product, the threat that competing products could deliver better service quality may seriously limit the ability to win customers.''
The good news for the current generation of data center and colocation providers is that it's easier for them to add a menu of services than for service providers to jump-start an infrastructure business.
"The delivery process of traditional service providers ... will require fundamental shifts in their ability to meet the demands of provisioning for a computing utility environment," said Tapper. "As such, conversion to a utility model may not be possible for these players.''

Rich Miller is editor of the CarrierHotels.com web site.