DIFFUSION OF A CLOUD-BASED SAP ENTERPRISE SYSTEM TO DANISH MUNICIPALITITES

For quite some time cloud computing has been a major trend in the IT business (Fenn, 2010; Wohl, 2010). Cloud computing is essentially a collection of deployment models and service delivery models which use the internet as an infrastructure. Cloud computing is often explained as consisting of cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), and cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (Mell and Grance, 2009).

In this paper we focus specifically on the SaaS as the primary mode. We have previously argued that there could be an SaaS subcategory called Enterprise Software as a Service (ESaaS) (Svejvig, Storgaard, and Møller, 2013). ESaaS encompasses Enterprise systems such as ERP, CRM, and BI systems. From a purely cloud-computing perspective, the delivery of such services does not significantly distinguish itself from the SaaS model, but from a practice perspective the difference may be significant. Enterprise systems have primarily been delivered by on-premises models. This model seems to be challenged, and in this paper we explore the case of ESaaS and diffusion in practice.

The study is based on the case of a modified SAP solution delivered by the vendor KMD to the Danish municipalities. KMD is a former shared IT company owned by the Danish municipalities. KMD has been responsible for the delivery of most IT systems to the municipalities. KMD now competes on a liberal market, but is still running and maintaining the old mainframe systems. Several years ago KMD was in the process of modernizing its service to the municipalities and decided to build its next-generation systems on the SAP Business Suite platform. This means that KMD has developed an industrial version of the SAP software called Opus to offer to the municipalities (public sector). It in this context that we attempt to answer the following research question: “How is Opus interpreted, diffused and adopted in Danish municipalities?”