by Steven Sulkin, MBM Productions International

Not too long ago, the biggest buzz in the meetings industry wasn’t spend management software, but online registration software.  Application Service Providers (ASP’s) sprang up everywhere trying to be the company to capture the market, to charge a per attendee fee or no fee at all so as to attract millions of users to their site for future gain.  Everyone it seemed wanted to get in on what was perceived as the lucrative ASP model of licensing (essentially “renting”) registration software to millions of users via the web.  Eventually this turned into what so many Internet models turn into and that is a commodity with a small group of companies providing a low cost web based service to millions.
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