Track

Systems Analysis and Design

Abstract

Cloud Computing and especially Software as a Service (SaaS) is predicted to bring about the next information technology(IT) revolution. Benefits and risks have been discussed extensively in both research and practice. Key benefits like higherflexibility and lower costs are confronted with major risks such as loss of data control. These benefits and risks arepredominantly discussed in the context of traditional SaaS. Here, the administrator configures and maintains the application.In contrast, new SaaS concepts allow shifting conceptual work to end-users by enabling them to adjust standard SaaSsoftware independently from their IT department. Using an action research approach, we investigated the benefits and risks ofthis so called user-designed SaaS, and compared them to those of traditional, administrator-designed SaaS. Many benefitsand risks still apply to user-designed SaaS, but also so far unknown benefits like higher user acceptance and lowerdependency to administrators, as well as new risks like shifting conceptual skills to the end-user were observed.

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