Abstract
Most organizations today are looking for more cost effective approaches to delivering enterprise applications to their user base. Among the alternatives that are becoming increasingly popular are various forms of e-collaboration that involve the sharing of information between organizations, integration of interenterprise business processes among partner organizations, and the delivery of software services by external application service providers (ASPs). Such recent trends are likely to produce a situation where most enterprise applications will be implemented collaboratively or supplied as services, making the Software-as-a-Service model the dominant method of enterprise application delivery. The extensive use of externally supplied software and information services will change the shape of the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) market and impact on management decisions about the deployment of enterprise ICT (Harber, 2004). These changes will affect both user organizations and organizations supplying ICT products and services. In this paper we analyze the above trends and discuss the impact of the Software-as-a-Service model on ICT user organizations and ICT suppliers. We first discuss the key enterprise computing trends and the strategic importance of ICT.
Key Terms in this Chapter
ASP (Application Service Provider): A company that offers individuals or enterprises access over the Internet to application programs and related services.
Enterprise Applications: Application software that implements a set of business functions, for example ERP (enterprise resource planning) or CRM (customer relationship management).
SLA (Service Level Agreement): A contract between the provider and customer of the ICT service. The main parts of the SLA are content of the service, volume of the service, quality of the service, and price of the service.
Multi-Tenant Architecture: Software architecture that is designed to support a large number of users from different user organizations on a scalable technological infrastructure.
Software-as-a-Service: Model for application delivery. Application service provider controls all necessary ICT infrastructure (HW+SW) and delivers application functionality as a service via Internet to many customers.
ICT Service: A basic element that defines the boundary between business and ICT activities. ICT service is described using an SLA (service level agreement).
Business Process: A collection of related, structured activities that produce a specific service or product for a particular customer.