Who's dead: ASPs or software?

Stewart Alsop says, despite Loudcloud changing names and changing models, don't write off the ASP business model yet.

There are a couple of ASP-style companies now doing good business. Their secret is that they don't rent services that are core to corporate IT; they don't try to get companies to trust the heart of their computing to someone else. Instead, they have shown IT managers that they can do a terrific job running discrete applications. In such cases companies may well prefer to rent rather than license software. ...

There aren't many other ASPs doing well, but hey, that's why this is a contrarian bet! The concept here--that renting software may be a smart idea when applications are good but not critical to the tech workings of corporations--isn't widely accepted. But it makes sense to me, and I'm betting it will take hold.