Who is out there?

Abstract

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively neworganizational application sourcing alternative, offering organizations the option to access applications-via the Internet-that are remotely hosted on offsite servers instead of installing equivalent applications in-house, thus presumably saving costs. Although SaaS has been offered since the late 1990s, so far it has not become a dominant sourcing alternative for organizational core applications, in spite of the fact that most leading IT companies now offer remotely-hosted organizationwide applications. This study conceptualized and empirically tested a model of the effects of the perceived risk of SaaS and trust in the SaaS vendor community on the organizational intention to adopt SaaS at this early stage of the SaaS market. Three novel, risk-related constructs were developed: perceived risk of SaaS, perceived risk of systems unavailability, and perceived risk of data insecurity. Likewise, three new trust-related constructs were also conceived: trust in the SaaS vendor community, perceived capabilities and perceived reputation of the SaaS vendor community. An empirical test of the model demonstrated the negative effect of perceived risk and the positive effects of trust in, and the reputation of, the SaaS vendor community, on the intention to adopt SaaS. Trust in the SaaS vendor community was also found to strongly affect all three risk concepts.

Understanding the Complex Adoption Behavior of Cloud Services by SMEs Based on Complexity Theory: A Fuzzy Sets Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA)

“…(i) Provider Capability. Cloud provider capabilities refer to the technical service capabilities of the provider and the management service capabilities required to virtually complete work tasks in specific areas, such as computing capabilities, the ability to reasonably take security measures and disaster recovery measures, and the ability to standardize service standards [41,63,79,80]. Cloud service providers with higher capabilities can usually better protect the private data of an enterprise and achieve higher technological advancement and service standardization.…”

Managing SaaS Risk in Higher Education Organisations

“…We argue that risks can affect SaaS adoption because these are factors that can impact on an organisation's assets and performance outcomes when their corresponding expected and unexpected consequences eventuate (Levin & Schneider, 1997;Stoneburner, Goguen, & Feringa, 2002). Therefore, using the TOE framework as a basis for identifying SaaS risks at HEOs, and subsequently, developing a risk management framework is not unreasonable (Gupta & Herath, 2005;Heart, 2010). Additionally, a review of extant technology assessment literature suggests that reveals that it is consistent with the TOE framework (Hensiksen, 1997;Tran, 2007;Van Den Ende et al, 1998).…”

“…The software applications are controlled by providers or vendors which consumers can access remotely through thin client interfaces (e.g. web-browsers via the internet) in return for payment of usage fees or even free-of-charge (Gupta & Herath, 2005;Heart, 2010). Popular examples include web-based mail (e.g.…”

“…As SaaS is an emerging phenomenon, there is paucity of research concerning the perceived risks that affect the adoption intentions of HEOs (Heart, 2010;Susarla, Barua & Whinston, 2003). In attempts to address these shortcomings and to add to existing SaaS literature, the goal of this paper is to address the research question:…”