Adoption trends in application service provisioning: an exploratory field study of small and medium-size enterprises

This paper describes an exploratory field study on the adoption of Application Service Provisioning (ASP) in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Rooted in Merton’s Motivation-Ability model of innovation, and based on an integrated multi-theoretical framework, several factors are identified, which drive and enable ASP adoption. The results of the survey indicate that the primary drivers for ASP adoption in SMEs are improved operational excellence, focus on core competency, easy access, and flexible deployment. Critical enabling factors of ASP adoption involve application service security, service level management, SME trust in ASP, and quality of application service. The findings provide support for the research model, i.e., both motivation and maturity factors play a pivotal role in ASP adoption. Moreover, whereas the first wave of ASP was characterized by a strong ‘technology-push’, currently, a ‘SME Technology-Pull’ characterizes ASP adoption. The paper concludes by discussing several important lessons and presents a model for strategic ASP alignment.