Software-as-a-Service in Small and Medium Enterprises: An Empirical Attitude Assessment

摘要

Cloud service providers praise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as very attractive for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, little research has been done on the SMEs' perspectives on this matter. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted among German enterprises that tries to clarify their views of SaaS. Starting with the actual IT situation, we show the prerequisites as well as the reasons in favor of and against the use of SaaS. We then show that the views of SMEs differ in some significant respects from that of CSPs, and we deduce hypotheses that can help towards a better design and delivery of cloud software and services.