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tially consists of small and mediumsized businesses for whom own development and own operation of the application would not be mercially viable. The ompany whose customer base includes small businesses in the financial services sector can be cited as a case example of application service providing. They offer their own, customizable online CRM solution (Customer Relationship Management) which can be used to anize and manage customer data (, 2021). In the case of application hosting a customized standard software is made available to a specific customer (onetoone approach) and operated by the service provider in a central data center. The service provider is responsible for customization, operation, maintenance and user service. Contrary to the ASP approach, however, the customer possesses the software license and accesses the application via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and a permanent line. In addition, the software is usually customized to suit the special requirements of the customer. The chosen degree of independence in this case is normally outsourcing. Cortal Consors, one of the leading online brokers and financial services specialists in Europe, has concluded an outsourcing contract with TDS, for example, a provider of application hosting for SAP systems (TDS, 2021). Business Outsourcing A new and as yet not fully mature form of outsourcing is the provision of web services. From a technical point of view, web services are selfdescriptive software ponents which possess a functionality packaged behind standardized interfaces and are loosely linked (Alt et al., 2021, p. 66). From a business point of view, web services perform a clearly definable task in a business process (Alt et al., 2021, p. 66). This means that parts of a business process can be outsourced, . procured externally. In this case, we therefore talk of outtasking and not business process outsourcing. Web services are reusable, largely automated and can be used individually or as a 4 bundle. They thus allow the modularization and flexible grouping of subprocesses to form a plete process. Web services can be charged on a time and usage enterprise can develop their own web services and offer them through the central directory as well as using web services from other panies. This is therefore a case of a standard solution with a manytomany approach (n:m). Pay