Preparing for the Era of Cloud Computing: Towards a Framework for Selecting Business Process Support Services

Abstract

The shift to the cloud computing creates new opportunities for the IT usage in business. New standard and customizable services that do not require high initial investment allow business people to choose services to support their business activities without involving technicians. Business process solutions providers are already moving their products to the cloud offering them as services. The question arises of how a business person, e.g. a department manager, can decide on which service suits best his/her needs. The paper investigates this issue in respect to the services that provide fully customizable operational support to business processes. The paper suggests a practical framework for defining requirements based on characteristics of the process to be supported by the service. The framework determines the needs of such capabilities as process flow support, shared spaces, team collaboration, etc., based on the high-level analysis of a process in question. The framework is aimed at serving as a basis for designing a practical methodology for selecting business process support services.