The SaaS Payoff: Measuring the Business Value of Provisioning Software-as-a-Service Technologies

Abstract

Creating and capturing value with new digital technologies such as cloud computing is often fraught with complexity and ambiguity for incumbent information technology (IT) firms. Using the business model concept as a lens, the objective of this chapter is to address a current gap in our knowledge about the impact of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on incumbent IT supply-side organisations. The empirical findings from a cross-case study analysis of two incumbent IT service providers lead to a number of in-depth insights that are discussed in this paper. The study identifies six tangible business model payoffs that have resulted from provisioning SaaS technologies. Subsequently, this paper lays the foundation for contributing to understanding how SaaS technologies can influence business models.