A leading professional and technical services company in Bermuda has launched an application service provider (ASP) aimed at helping small to medium-sized businesses dealing with expensive I.T. operations.

Independent Consulting Solutions, a professional and technical services company, launched eVolution ASP aimed primarily at growing small to medium-sized businesses.

As an ASP, it offers clients direct access, via the Internet, to the full suite of products within Microsoft Office, including Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.

ICS will also be offering Sun Accounts, QuickBooks, Lotus Notes, Great Plains Accounting and SQL Server applications and also offers a web site hosting package

?In short, a one-stop shop for all the I.T. needs of small and medium-sized businesses,? said a release from the company.

The company said that other benefits included full systems back-up, disaster recovery planning, anti-spamming and anti-virus ?built in?.

?The eVolution consulting team is able to test, and usually enable, specialised software, such as financial and accounting specific products, to run on eVolution, providing a meaningful ?one-stop? computing environment for clients,? added the release.

ICS said it is offering all potential clients a free test account for 30 days.

?The never ending cycle of buying new PCs, servers and software licenses is a costly and often prohibitive exercise for many small to medium-sized companies who need to release resources and funds to concentrate on core-growth,? says Robert Salmon, president and chief executive officer of ICS. ?eVolution is a robust and fully redundant service which provides a clean and painless solution.?

Clients signing on for the first time click one button to accept ?content? (30 seconds), and the install is then complete. From that point on the only pre-requisite is to have Internet access, the company said.

?Then customers are up and running, from wherever they are in the world, as if they were sitting at their desk. There is little, or no, technician involvement,? added Mr. Salmon.

Already ICS has a number of customers for the system, including law firms, new start-ups and financial companies and is currently hosting 25 web sites.