Modularization of ERP Services in the Context of Cloud Computing - Thesis Example

Today's ERP market is dominated by ERP suites fewer suppliers. So the five vendors SAP, Oracle, Sage, Infor and Microsoft have a combined market share of over 50% (Pang, 2013). The usage of this standard ERP suites is associated with risks (Raimo, 2012), that can be applied for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as for large companies. This and the software and implementation result in large costs for ERP initiation (Martin, 2003). That depresses the IT budget of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) significantly (Computer Economics, 2013)1.

Through the principle of Modularization is trying the ERP vendors to limit the complexity and cost by offering customers relevant modules functionality (Böhmann & Krcmar, 2005). However, this Modularization is technical in nature and limited to the configuration of a single product. Therefore a fulfillment of different non-functional requirements within a company is limited as a recently published interview with the internationally operating company Hilti shows (Eriksdotter, 2013)2.

The first attempts at the completion of modularization of ERP products on a basis of solution-, vendor- and operator model limitations are being made with products such as Force.com and SAP Business ByDesign (Hester Christian man, 2013) for several years now. Such approaches are also possible with the use of cloud computing. For internationally operating SMEs and corporations this results in the ability of more efficient fulfillment of their different regional non-functional requirements. However, the lack of presence of successfully established and fully modularized ERP products let us suggest that not all possibilities are already exhausted.

In this work, we study and analyze such presumptions as well as opportunities and risks and also possibilities for dealing with these risks and opportunities.