How to support transformation from on-premise products to SaaS? Position paper for future research

This paper reviews academic knowledge for software-intensive business firms’ approaches to support transition from on-premise solutions to SaaS. The aim is to increase preunderstanding for future research and review the transformation’s impact on business models. The study is restricted to the small and medium-sized software vendors. In addition, embedded software vendors are excluded from the research. In preliminary unsystematic literature review, several business model specifications and canvases used to address the transformation were identified. Firstly, a few of the papers were concentrating on huge software-intensive companies like Oracle, Siebel etc. and comparing their business models. Secondly, other studies were analyzing technology changes as well as threats and the lifecycle of technology. Thirdly, researches were analyzing SaaS platforms like (Microsoft’s) Azure or (Amazon’s) AWS. The review shows that few works focused on how the smaller enterprise software companies did the transfer, which covers for example personnel, product portfolio, distribution network, market segmentation and revenue model or why they have not even started. This study shows that there is lack of studies addressing this issue and propose further research on the issues, which would benefit small- and medium-sized software-intensive firms.