The Use of Hosted Enterprise Applications by SMEs: A Dual Market and User Perspective

YesThis deliberately dual perspective paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the engagement of SMEs in hosted enterprise applications in the UK. The emergence and development of the ASP sector has attracted much interest and highly optimistic forecasts for revenues. The paper starts by considering ICT adoption by SMEs in general before reviewing the provision of hosted enterprise applications in the US and UK (market perspective). The study is extended by qualitative empirical data collected by semi-structured interviews with SME users of hosted enterprise applications (user perspective) and subsequent analysis in order to develop the key findings and conclusions. From an SME user perspective the key findings to emerge from the study include: i) confirmation that ICT infrastructure was no longer a barrier to adoption, ii) the pragmatic approach taken to security issues, iii) the use of both multiple information systems and multiple service providers, iv) the financial attractiveness of the rental model and v) the intention to continue or extend the use of hosted applications. It also highlights the opportunity for gaining competitive advantage by using hosted enterprise applications to reduce costs. There are very few empirical studies of hosted applications which take deliberately market and SME user perspectives - this paper makes an important contribution in this emerging field

The Use of Hosted Enterprise Applications by SMEs: A User Perspective

This paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the engagement of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in hosted enterprise applications (high complexity e-business applications) in the UK by investigating the relevance of organisational and technical factors through conducting interviews with SME users of hosted applications. The emergence and development of the application service provider (ASP) sector has attracted much interest and highly optimistic forecasts for revenues. Of particular interest in this paper is the emergence of service offerings targeted specifically at SMEs. The paper starts by considering information technology (IT) adoption by SMEs in general before reviewing the provision of hosted enterprise applications in the US and UK. The empirical data collected from SME users of hosted enterprise applications is then analysed in order to produce the key findings and conclusions. From an SME user perspective the key findings to emerge from the study include: i) confirmation that ICT infrastructure was no longer a barrier to adoption, ii) the pragmatic approach taken to security issues, iii) the use of both multiple information systems (hosted and resident) and service providers, iv) the attractiveness of the rental cost model and v) the intention to continue or extend their use of hosted applications within the enterprise. The early promise of the ASP sector appears not to have been generally realised for SMEs in the UK. This study explores the experience of early adopters of this new IT related innovation and identifies some significant business gains experienced by SME users. It also highlights the opportunity for gaining competitive advantage by using hosted enterprise applications to reduce costs. There are very few empirical studies of hosted applications which take a deliberately SME user perspective and this paper make an important contribution in this emerging field

The Potential of Critical E-Applications for Engaging SMEs in E Business: A Provider Perspective

YesAgainst a background of the low engagement of SMEs in e-business this paper investigates the emergence of, and potential for, critical e-applications defined as `an e-business application, promoted by a trusted third party, which engages a significant number of SMEs by addressing an important shared business concern within an aggregation.¿ By a review of secondary data and empirical investigation with service providers and other intermediaries the research shows that such applications can facilitate the e-business engagement of SMEs. There are three key findings, namely: the emergence of aggregation specific e-business applications; the emergence of collaboratively based `one to many¿ business models; and the importance of trusted third parties in the adoption of higher complexity e-business applications by SMEs. Significantly this work takes a deliberately provider perspective and complements the already considerable literature on SME IT adoption from a user and network perspective. In terms of future research the importance of a better conceptual understanding of the impact of complexity on the adoption of IT by SMEs is highlighted

Exploring the Supply-Side of Web Services: The Need for Market Positioning

Web services are emerging as a new paradigm for integrating business processes across heterogeneous computing environments. They are expected to alleviate the perennial problem of interoperability of software applications, which results in data and information silos. Many application service providers have repositioned themselves as Web services providers to compete in this highly volatile industry. This paper focuses upon the supply-side of Web services, utilizing four constructs: market positioning, partnerships and alliances, products and services, and integration. It presents the findings from survey research into 190 technology sector firms, which indicate that Web service firms will need to strengthen their market positioning if they are to develop strong partnerships and alliances with leading technology firms

Value Creation from Application Service Provisioning: Lessons from Four Vendor Firms

This paper embraces the electronic business model concept as the unit of analysis for investigating application service providers (ASPs). It develops three constructs fundamental to the ASP business model: strategic positioning, product/service portfolio, and customer value proposition. Four short case study examples of different ASP business models are discussed. The findings suggest that, despite firm efforts to strategically differentiate their ASP business model from their rivals, each failed to provide the customer with an attractive value proposition to achieve a sustainable competitive position

Developments in Practice V: IT Sourcing: Build, Buy, or Market

This paper describes the logical evolution of IT service provisioning through various delivery models over time concentrating on the rent era as well as the market era - an emerging external IT services marketplace that offers rich opportunities for IT organizations to become more cost-effective in the future. With the market era, IT organizations speculate that strategic business applications for mission-critical applications will remain in-house but delivery for standard and meta-industry applications, processes, and technology will be off-site. Thus, for most companies, it is likely that external IT providers will form part of their future service delivery package and that some IT departments will become both consumers and sellers of components. The implications of these developments for IT management are articulated and the elements of an IT sourcing strategy presented

In-Depth Revealing Grid Based Web Service Provision Model: Grid Service Provision (GSP)

Current development of network infrastructures is undergoing rapid transformation. With the emergence of the Open Grid Service Architecture and Globus Toolkit as incubators for evolving ASP business model to maintain profitability, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of the hypothetical Grid Service Provision (GSP) model by firstly giving an historical account of evolutionary factors in Internet architectures leading to Grid and P2P and secondly, investigating GSP model in the contexts of Service Level Agreements metrics and GSP implementation details. It is acknowledged by some experts that this hypothetical model is technologically feasible in reality