Factors Influencing Cloud ERP Adoption: A Comparison Between SMEs and Large Companies
(2013) INFM03 20131Department of Informatics
- Abstract
- Cloud computing has become one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. In the wake of this success, cloud based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as an alternative to the traditional ERPs for companies to plan and manage their resources. These systems require low upfront investments and can rapidly be deployed, as they and their underlying infrastructure are provided by a third party over the cloud on a subscription-based or pay-per use basis. In existing research, cloud ERPs are praised as a way for SMEs to reap the benefits of an ERP without having to put out big and risky investments as well as having to possess heavy IT capabilities in the form of a large IT department. However, not much has been done... (More)
- Cloud computing has become one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. In the wake of this success, cloud based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as an alternative to the traditional ERPs for companies to plan and manage their resources. These systems require low upfront investments and can rapidly be deployed, as they and their underlying infrastructure are provided by a third party over the cloud on a subscription-based or pay-per use basis. In existing research, cloud ERPs are praised as a way for SMEs to reap the benefits of an ERP without having to put out big and risky investments as well as having to possess heavy IT capabilities in the form of a large IT department. However, not much has been done to investigate how well a large company can utilize a cloud ERP. Cloud ERPs inherit many of the benefits and limitations of cloud computing. In this study we seek to unravel how well SMEs and large companies can utilize cloud ERPs by identifying and classifying the opportunities and concerns often associated with cloud ERPs with respect to company size. For this purpose, we have conducted interviews with experts in ERP vendors that have much experience in dealing with a great variety of companies, of all sizes and industries. Before that, we had gathered and analyzed the relevant literature regarding the opportunities and concerns related to cloud ERPs and cloud computing, which we later used as a basis for our analysis of the collected empirical data. Our results show that SMEs, and in particular small companies, can best exploit cloud ERPs as many of the benefits, such as lower upfront and operating costs, access to advanced technology and scalability, are more relevant for them. At the same time, many of the concerns associated with cloud ERPs are not seen as important for SMEs. On the other hand, large companies have severe concerns that are related to their size, complexity and demands. However, we have found that a hybrid solution, in which business critical and sensitive applications are kept on-premise, can allow large companies to settle many of their concerns while at the same time enable them to reap some of the benefits of cloud computing. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/3813891
- author
- Alajbegovic, Amar ; Alexopoulos, Vasileios LU and Desalermos, Achillefs
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- INFM03 20131
- year
- 2013
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Cloud, ERP, SMEs, Large companies, Opportunities, Concerns
- report number
- INF13-040
- language
- English
- id
- 3813891
- date added to LUP
- 2013-09-30 15:38:55
- date last changed
- 2013-09-30 15:38:55
@misc{3813891,
abstract = {{Cloud computing has become one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry. In the wake of this success, cloud based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as an alternative to the traditional ERPs for companies to plan and manage their resources. These systems require low upfront investments and can rapidly be deployed, as they and their underlying infrastructure are provided by a third party over the cloud on a subscription-based or pay-per use basis. In existing research, cloud ERPs are praised as a way for SMEs to reap the benefits of an ERP without having to put out big and risky investments as well as having to possess heavy IT capabilities in the form of a large IT department. However, not much has been done to investigate how well a large company can utilize a cloud ERP. Cloud ERPs inherit many of the benefits and limitations of cloud computing. In this study we seek to unravel how well SMEs and large companies can utilize cloud ERPs by identifying and classifying the opportunities and concerns often associated with cloud ERPs with respect to company size. For this purpose, we have conducted interviews with experts in ERP vendors that have much experience in dealing with a great variety of companies, of all sizes and industries. Before that, we had gathered and analyzed the relevant literature regarding the opportunities and concerns related to cloud ERPs and cloud computing, which we later used as a basis for our analysis of the collected empirical data. Our results show that SMEs, and in particular small companies, can best exploit cloud ERPs as many of the benefits, such as lower upfront and operating costs, access to advanced technology and scalability, are more relevant for them. At the same time, many of the concerns associated with cloud ERPs are not seen as important for SMEs. On the other hand, large companies have severe concerns that are related to their size, complexity and demands. However, we have found that a hybrid solution, in which business critical and sensitive applications are kept on-premise, can allow large companies to settle many of their concerns while at the same time enable them to reap some of the benefits of cloud computing.}},
author = {{Alajbegovic, Amar and Alexopoulos, Vasileios and Desalermos, Achillefs}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Factors Influencing Cloud ERP Adoption: A Comparison Between SMEs and Large Companies}},
year = {{2013}},
}