ASNET, Inc. - Apps

Normally, when you want a "Web presence," you hire a designer to design the HTML (HyperText Markup Language - the language that Web pages are written in) and images, you then hire a programmer to breathe life into those pages (so forms do something useful, so searches yield results, etc.), you sign up for a Web hosting account (to serve your Web to visitors), and then you hire somebody to put all of the above together into something that works, and hope it all fits together nicely.

It's a relatively new model, intended to replace the traditional model. Rather than making a large up-front investment in a codebase that then requires constant care and feeding, you simply rent use of an existing codebase custom tailored to your exact specifications, and leave maintenance duties to the experts.

Nope, your payment to ASNET takes care of everything.

You get to save a lot of money upfront, since your only upfront investment is in a Web designer (and if you're fairly handy with Macromedia DreamWeaver or equivalent, you can even do it yourself). You also save the headache of having to stay on top of a whole team of people, each doing his own thing (and probably charging you by the hour).

Well, not exactly: you'll generally realize long-term savings as well, since maintaining any reasonably large application yourself is a nontrivial undertaking. By opting for application hosting, you're allowing ASNET to take advantage of the economies of scale gained by maintaining many similar applications. Much of that savings is passed on to you. The net result is that in most cases, your total cost of ownership (TCO, if you want to sound like a big-shot executive) over the life of the application will be substantially lower. In addition, in virtually all cases, your monthly cost will be extremely stable, allowing you to plan your budget much more easily.

In a perfect world, everybody is a programmer, and so owning the code means something. In today's fast-paced economy, code becomes obsolete rather quickly, and needs updates to continue to be useful. In other words, code is an asset that rapidly depreciates without proper care and feeding. To make matters worse, the platforms the code is written for become outdated, as well, forcing you to "port" your code over to a new platform (or to maintain an obsolete platform - which becomes expensive rather quickly as the workforce moves away from it). However, if your application is popular, its maintenance cost is spread out among its users. Think of it as buying Windows from Microsoft rather than hiring a team to program your own version, just so you can own the code. (Disclaimer: ASNET recommends Debian GNU/Linux, not Windows Vista Ultimate.)

No reputable company would ever ask you for that. Your Web is your own, and you're not expected to advertise the fact that you're running on an ASNET platform (although you're certainly free to, if it's advantageous to you for whatever reason). In fact, you're free to advertise "Powered by Gonzo" or whatever, which may be particularly useful if you're reselling Application Hosting plans.

In most cases, programmers prefer to charge you upfront for their work, so they can take their money and move on to their next client. ASNET, Inc. is primarily an infrastructure consulting and management company, so the priorities here are slightly different. It's worth noting that there are a number of other companies offering a similar service, though, and the market share has been growing over the past few years.

The other way around would be more precise: Application Hosting came first. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe are entering the game rather late, and not surprisingly, they're attempting to apply the same cookie cutter approach that they apply to their shrink-wrapped products - hence the "Software as a Service" term. (They're essentially putting mass produced software online.) ASNET's solution was a natural consolidation of the Web hosting and Web development businesses, to take the headache out of deploying Web applications - hence the "Application Hosting" term. With the Application Hosting approach, only back-end components are mass-produced, so you gain the advantages of a truly custom-built system, while enjoying the advantages of mature, well-tested code.

There are no long-term commitments (and no termination fees, by extension), nor are there any setup fees or hosting fees. (Hosting is included in the rental, and eCommerce applications include a dedicated IP address, so you can have your own secure server certificate.) You don't pay a cent until your application is online and earns your final approval. The only catch is that monthly billing isn't prorated, so if you cancel after eleven months and one day, you get charged for the (full) twelfth month.

Okay, there is a hidden fee: $30/month for every Mbps you use, but if you use less than 1Mbps (which is almost certain to be the case if you don't have hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, unless you're hosting videos) then you don't get charged for bandwidth at all. If you're over 1Mbps and can't find any advertisers to foot the bill for you, ASNET will happily buy some advertising from you at market rates.

ASNET will always remain a small company, so your consultant will always have the authority to work out a custom plan to meet your needs. That said, you can switch to an annual plan for the price of ten months, or to a lifetime plan for the price of three annual plans. (You can also switch back from an annual plan to a monthly plan at any time.)

Since you're only renting use of the codebase, you never actually have the code in the first place, so naturally the code doesn't go with you when you leave.

The HTML and images are your own (unless you worked out some other arrangement with whoever made them for you), so they remain yours when you leave.

Most application hosting services hold your data hostage when you leave - not ASNET! Your data is made available to you in machine-readable form when you are ready to leave, so you can easily load it into a replacement system. There's also no fine print in the Terms of Service allowing ASNET to hold your data hostage for all sorts of alleged violations: as long as you aren't behind on your regular payments, we'll do everything commercially feasible in order to get you your data, if ASNET is legally able to give you your data without creating a liability (for example, if the copyright holder threatens to sue), and even in such a case, ASNET will make every commercially reasonable effort to give you the largest subset of your data deemed, in good faith, to be safe. ASNET believes in Truth in Advertising, so nothing in your Terms of Service will contradict anything here.

ASNET employees have friends, and some of them are top notch designers. No commissions are charged for the referrals, nor is ASNET directly compensated in any other way. If you prefer a single point of contact, ASNET will generally agree to consolidate responsibilities, billing, and points of contact for the convenience of the client, for a fee (operationally equivalent to ASNET subcontracting the designer, and giving you one fat invoice to cover the whole business). In such cases, ASNET's standard credit terms will apply to the entire invoice. Finally, if you look at the design credits on the bottom of this page, you'll notice that there's yet another option: get free designs from designers looking to promote themselves in exchange for giving credit where it's due (essentially giving them free advertising). With this last option, you get a free design, and everybody wins. Occasionally, a budding designer will get in touch with ASNET directly and offer free designs in exchange for free advertising; such offers are relayed on to you, so the two of you can get in touch with each other and negotiate a deal that both of you can be happy with.

Dave (201-406-6766) sits around all day and all night waiting for you to call (or for a server to go down, so he can jump on it). Feel free to call with any questions. (For substantial applications, you can usually get an estimate over the phone, and a quote within 24 hours. For most small applications, you can get a quote right over the phone.) Feel free to try Live Chat, to get quick answers to questions.

It's a shame that questions like that ever have to come up at all. Web hosts have no control over what applications you're running on your Web hosting account, so they have to be paranoid when the load goes up, to avoid degrading service to their other customers. With ASNET's Application Hosting plans, though, there's plenty of hot standby infrastructure just waiting to handle all the "unexpected visitors" that Digg or Slashdot can throw your way. You should never have to worry about these types of things, and so with ASNET, you don't.

ASNET is not a court. ASNET, Inc., however, is a New Jersey C Corporation, and as such is required by U.S. law to waste resources emulating a broken telephone between claimants and alleged infringers, in certain cases. (If this bothers you, talk to your local government representative. Alternatively, consider supporting the 2020 Presidential campaign of the ASNET Chairman of the Board.) If you intend to violate US law or to do anything that's likely to trigger complaints about alleged US law violations, keep in mind that the DMCA prevents a US-based company from being able to match the quality of service of a foreign company, without risking being held liable for your actions (raising the costs of doing business), so you may find that a foreign company is capable of providing a better customer experience. That said, ASNET will remain as neutral as reasonably feasible in any dispute (which isn't saying much, as U.S. law is rigged against anybody doing business with the alleged violator), and will try to point both sides to potentially useful resources. (The actual usefulness of a resource may only be judged by a lawyer, according to US law, so just to clarify: no legal advice is ever given by ASNET, and if you think that legal advice was given by an ASNET employee or other representative, you are very mistaken: ASNET has no lawyers on-staff, and hopefully never will.) Put another way, your stuff won't stay down indefinitely even if the claimant drops the claim, or if you win the associated court case. ASNET takes your First Amendment rights as seriously as it can safely do, under U.S. law. If you're a claimant, you can either email or snailmail your complaint in. If you're sending it in by email, send a properly completed DMCA form to ipviolations@asnetinc.net, make sure the subject line is "IP Infringement xr23" (without the quotes), sign your email with PGP, and be prepared for a reply to verify that you are indeed responsible for the original email; this is the minimum necessary to protect ASNET's customers from fraudulent infringement claims. If you can't meet these basic requirements, you'll have to send it in by mail to ASNET's regular address with a SASE, and then expect a snailmail reply to verify your complaint. Once your complaint is verified (whether by email or snailmail), the material should be down within 24 business hours, unless the alleged infringer files suit against you during that time. Expect a courtesy email from ASNET, either way (unless the exchange was by snailmail, in which case you'll need to send in a second SASE if you want the courtesy snailmail).

That's an easy one: ASNET only provides your personal information as you specifically direct. Put another way, none of your personal information goes from ASNET to anywhere without your explicit request. Furthermore, disclosure of your personal information within ASNET is limited to a need-to-know basis, and employees face disciplinary action for failure to uphold the privacy policy.

No, ASNET may not change your terms of service or privacy policy, with or without notice. However, ASNET may post new terms of service and/or a new privacy policy at will; you're free to switch to the new version, or you may stay with the old version. (You stay on the old version, by default, and must notify ASNET if you elect to switch.)

Companies normally treat client accounts as "assets." These assets have value, and by default the value is transferable to any party that acquires the assets of the company in question. ASNET views an account as a relationship, not an asset, and the presumption is that any change in either party to a relationship invalidates the relationship. As a special exception for your convenience, you may transfer your account as part of any merger that you have specifically authorized. For your protection, though, ASNET's side of the relationship is considerably more rigid. ASNET may not transfer your account to any party for any reason, including (but not limited to) as a result of a merger, or as a result of another party acquiring (some, most, or all of) ASNET's assets. A party acquiring your account in violation of this provision owes you $100 for each day that it holds your account, and explicitly instructs any court to start with a presumption of fraud, without limiting any of your available remedies. In addition, ASNET may not retain your account without your explicit consent in the event of any change in the ASNET Board membership. (You must specifically approve each individual membership change. If you do not approve the change within 30 days, ASNET must immediately discontinue billing on your account, refund all billing periods that were active during those 30 days (not pro-rated: ASNET never prorates billing as a matter of policy), deliver to you a complete copy of your data, and discontinue your account within 24 business hours of notification by you of securing an alternate arrangement. If no notification is received within 30 days, ASNET must discontinue your account before the 31st day.) The goal of this last provision is to virtually guarantee that ASNET will remain a small company forever. Put another way, you can be sure that your personal data is safe with ASNET, not just today, but even tomorrow.

The ASNET Application Hosting platform was built from the ground up using best practices as defined by the security community, often going against "best practices" as defined by the PERL and PHP literature. When all the SQL injection vulnerabilities were making their rounds in the various open source (and closed source) software packages, ASNET customers were able to sleep at night, knowing that the platform was immune to SQL injection by design. Now, with XSS vulnerabilities popping up everywhere, ASNET customers are able to sleep at night, knowing that the platform is immune to the two most common types of XSS attacks - again, by design. A huge advantage of outsourcing to a company that builds and maintains applications for a living is that such a company can afford to invest the resources necessary to get things right, both in design and in implementation. Such a company can also upgrade existing applications without you even noticing, so ASNET customers had their MD5 and SHA1 hashed passwords automatically upgraded to whirlpool early last year, for example, without spending an extra cent, and without a single second of downtime.

ASNET only fields UNIX-like (GNU/Linux and OpenBSD) servers, so Microsoft's regular stream of security advisories is irrelevant here. In fact, ASNET doesn't even own any Microsoft-based computers, so you never have to worry about a virus infecting an administrator's personal computer and stealing root passwords for servers. (Hey, don't laugh: that's exactly how a group of Chinese crackers were able to get terabytes-worth of plans for the JSF (the Joint Strike Fighter - a.k.a. our F-16 replacement).) Only necessary services run on the servers, reducing needless exposure. When a security-enhancing patch becomes available for one of those services, it's applied promptly (and semi-automatically). When more than a couple of security-enhancing patches become available for a program, the program itself is replaced with an alternative that's secure by design. Then, of course, there are the obvious things: all privileged accounts have strong passwords, and remote administration is disabled for most services. All administrator connections are encrypted, and detailed logs are kept on separately-maintained log servers. Finally, all backups are encrypted before being shipped off-site, to protect your data from "insider jobs."