Search results

Fierce competition drives software vendors to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategies and to continuously match new releases with customers’ needs and competitors’ moves. Such recurrent release practices pose specific challenges for software vendors which shape how they service customers. To address these challenges, this paper aims to apply service science to innovate strategies for SaaS release management.

Based on action research methodology, the authors collaborated closely with Software Inc., an alias for a large multinational software provider, to apply service-dominant logic systematically, to analyze and improve its SaaS release management process and to support ongoing value co-creation with its customers.

The authors provide a detailed account of how Software Inc. improved its SaaS release management practices; they extend current understanding of service innovation dynamics in SaaS environments and offer a model of value co-creation in SaaS release management grounded in the findings from Software Inc.

The research draws on a single case study with particular characteristics. Still, it allows for analytical generalizations with both theoretical and practical implications for how SaaS managers can improve recurrent release practices based on foundational service-dominant logic principles.

The authors suggest that SaaS managers concentrate on knowledge-sharing with customers, ensure continuous communication among teams supporting the service, re-organize release management to enhance the value co-creation process, use technology to improve customer service experiences and use service mapping to improve release management and service quality.

The authors bridge service-dominant logic principles and SaaS knowledge by demonstrating how service-dominant logic can be used to improve SaaS release practices and by offering conceptual and practical knowledge about value co-creation between customers and suppliers in SaaS contexts.

This is a case study on the opportunities provided by Open Source library systems and the experience of delivering these systems through a shared service.

This chapter derives from desk research, interviews, and direct involvement in the project. The format is a case study, setting out a detailed timeline of events with information that can be applied in other settings.

This chapter presents reflections on the value and limitations of collaboration amongst libraries and librarians on an innovative approach to library systems and technologies. It also presents reflections on lessons learned from the processes and detailed discussion of the success factors for shared services and the reasons why such initiatives may not result in the outcomes predicted at the start.

Libraries and IT services considering Open Source and shared service approaches to provision will find material in this study useful when planning their projects.

The nature of collaboration and collaborative working is studied and observations made about the way that outcomes cannot always be predicted or controlled. In a genuine collaboration, the outcome is determined by the interactions between the partners and is unique to the specifics of that collaboration.

The case study derives from interviews, written material and direct observation not generally in the public domain, providing a strong insider’s view of the activity.

This paper discusses an ongoing research programme, which explores the development of the software‐as‐a‐service business model by different service providers (xSPs). With the demise of the first phase of the ASP market, due to the failure of vendors to provide business value to potential and existing customers, Web services promise to resolve some of these problems by integrating software applications across heterogeneous technology platforms and business environments. Whether this will be achieved is the subject of continuing debate. This paper presents the preliminary findings from a study, which uses the Microsoft .NET technology platform to develop Web services. Two Web‐enabled prototype databases are discussed. The paper concludes that Web services is still relatively new, but if key technical and business challenges are resolved, it may provide value for the customer where ASPs failed.

Improved integration, centralized databases, access through Web browsers and application service providers (ASPs) are some of the current trends impacting on organizational decisions regarding IS/IT outsourcing. Web‐based technology liberated the client/server IT model from the limits of geographical boundaries delimited by a local area network. Partnering with the right ASPs could provide organizations with the new synergy required for competitive advantage. This paper outlines the development of a “solutions” innovation business model of rental‐based sourcing, charters current ASPs and the differences in IS/IT provision and offers an audit of the benefits and costs of ASPs to businesses and other stakeholders. Future challenges are mapped out for consideration as are strategic choices associated with continued outsourcing, as distinct from in‐sourcing, of IS/IT.

In the cloud computing era, three merging developments in software industry are: cloud and on-premises software may offer complementary value to each other; cloud software service requires the support of significant information technology infrastructure; and software piracy problems can be better managed in the cloud. However, how these developments together impact a vendor’s bundling strategy has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on the product bundling framework, this research establishes stylized models to study a software vendor’s bundling decision in the cloud-based era with special consideration on the issue of software piracy.

The authors find different key parameters associated with the cloud era exert different effects on the bundling decision. When on-premises software and cloud software generate additional value by complementing each other, software vendors can make greater profits under the pure components (PC) strategy. Regarding a low infrastructure cost, software vendors should favor pure bundling (PB). The impact of piracy deterrence effectiveness is less straightforward – it favors PC when piracy deterrence effectiveness is low, but PB when piracy deterrence effectiveness is high.

This study makes key contributions to theory and practice. First, this is the first study to examine software bundling strategies in the cloud computing era, whereby the three factors relevant to the cloud phenomenon have been considered. Second, this paper contributes to the literature of bundling and software piracy by examining the intersection of these two streams of literature. Third, this paper sheds light on a vendor’s bundling decision when facing piracy problems in the emerging cloud software era.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

Given that value exchange in virtually every sector of the economy is increasingly dominated by software, the goals of this chapter are to bring software to the attention of the academic marketing community, to discuss the unusual product attributes of software, and to therefore suggest some research topics related to software as a product attribute. Software allows service to be physically stored and allows physical objects to perform services. Managing products that have evolved into software products creates difficult challenges for managers as software does not resemble either tangible goods or intangible services in terms of production, operations, cost structure, or prescribed strategy. Every time a business replaces an employee with an e-service interaction, and every time a business adds a line of code to a previously inert object, the nature of that business changes. And as software gets more capable, its nature as a product changes as well by adding unique product characteristics summarized as complexity, intelligence, autonomy, and agency.

Recently emerged Software as a Service (SaaS)‐based services show that it is possible to curtail cost on operation and maintenance and also to reduce additional expenses required for system upgrades. It also allows creating new values by consolidating resources of individual users on a provider's platform, which is effectively applicable to library networks for resource sharing. The aim of this study is to present a next‐generation SaaS‐based library management system and its operational model. In addition, the paper seeks to discuss the availability of knowledge‐based services for the system.

First, this study analyzes trends in open library environments, as well as issues in the operation of library management systems. Second, it examines differences between reference models of SaaS and those of ASP solutions, and case studies on recent applications of the approaches are also performed. Third, the study forecasts effects expected when the SaaS model will be fully applied to the library network. And finally, the study presents functional requirements and an operation model of SaaS‐based library management systems.

In this study a model of a SaaS‐based system which can apply library network is presented. The model is composed of: SaaS platform comprising application service layer, common service layer and service resources; network service platform to support information sharing between participating libraries and local libraries clients.

The SaaS‐based system will enhance the economic efficiency of local library operations and make available new functionalities on an on‐demand basis. Also, its feature, such as sharing a single platform among several libraries, facilitates resource sharing and knowledge‐based services.

Cloud Computing (CC) technology is getting implemented rapidly in the educational sector to improve learning, research and other administrative process. As evident from the literature review, most of these implementations are happening in the western countries such as USA, UK, while the level of implementation of CC in developing countries such as India is rare. Moreover, implementing CC technology in the educational sector require various decisions to be made by the managers of the Information Technology (IT) department such as selecting suitable deployment model, vendor providing cloud service, etc. in their respective university or institute. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to address one such decision. Since, different types of CC deployment are available; selecting a suitable one plays a key role, as it might have an impact on the requirements of various stakeholders such as students, teachers, administrative staff (especially the staff members in the IT department), etc. apart from affecting the overall performance of the facilities such as a laboratory. Naturally, a proper decision by analysing multiple perspectives has to be made while carrying out such strategic initiatives by any educational institute.

A case study methodology has been chosen as the research methodology to discuss and demonstrate the above decision problem that was faced in real time by one of the educational institutes in India, offering high-quality management education. The IT managers of this institute were planning to switch over to CC technology for the computer laboratory and they have to make a decision of choosing suitable alternative CC deployment models such as private cloud (PRC), public cloud (PUC), community cloud (COC), hybrid cloud (HYC), etc. by analysing and comparing them based on various factors and perspectives such as elasticity, availability, scalability, etc. Since, multiple factors are involved in making such a strategic decision, the most commonly used Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model – namely, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used as a decision support during the decision making process.

The team of decision makers, who were planning to implement CC in the case institute, found that PRC is best as they believed that it would provide adequate cost savings, apart from providing necessary security to maintain confidential information such as student's detail, grades, etc.

The results obtained are based on a single case study. Hence, they cannot be generalized for institutions across educational sector. However, the decision making situation and understanding its impact on the stakeholders of the educational institute can be common across various educational institute.

Using a real-life case study of an educational institute, this paper presented a strategic decision making situation, which needs to be considered by the IT managers of the educational institutes when they decide to switch over to CC technology. Various criteria to be considered during the decision making process was identified from the literature review were identified and enumerated. These factors would useful for the IT managers of the different educational institute and they can suitably add or delete these decision criteria as per their requirements and situation at hand. Moreover, the algorithm of AHP, which was used as a decision support, was presented in a step-by-step manner, which should be beneficial for the practitioners to apply the same for similar decision making situations.

It is believed that this paper would be the first to report on a strategic decision of choosing the deployment model for CC technology especially in the educational sector. Similarly, this paper would also contribute to the field of CC, as it lists out the decision criteria that are to be considered for making the above decision, which has not got adequate importance. Lastly, this paper is also unique in the realm of AHP because application for a decision problem in the field of CC especially in the educational sector is least reported.

Cloud computing is qualified to present proper limitless storage and computation resources to users as services throughout the internet. Software as a service (SaaS) layer is the key paradigm perspective in the software layer of the cloud computing. SaaS is connected by business applications to access consumers on existing public, private and hybrid cloud models. This purpose of this paper is to present a discussion and analysis on the SaaS layer based on business applications in the cloud environment in form of a classical taxonomy to recognize the existing techniques, challenges and efforts.

Existing techniques, challenges and efforts are classified into four categories: platform-dependent, application-dependent, data-dependent and security-dependent mechanisms. The SaaS layer mechanisms are compared with each other according to the important factors such as the structural properties, quality of service metrics, applied algorithms and measurement tools.

The benefits and weaknesses of each research study are analyzed. In the comparison results, the authors observed that the application-based method, the non-heuristic algorithms, the business process method have the highest percentage of the usage in this literature.

The SaaS layer mechanisms based on business applications have some main features such as high accessibility, compatibility, reusability and collaboration to provide activated application and operation services for user with help of Web browsers. A comprehensive analysis was presented as originality on the SaaS layer mechanisms based on business applications for high level of the cloud environment that 46 peer-reviewed studies were considered.