A Comparative Analysis between SMEs and Large Companies in Relation to Integration Technologies Adoption

Integration technologies like Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Web Services allow organisations to collaborate with their partners, increase flexibility and gain competitive advantages. Despite the benefits that the integration of Information Systems (IS) can offer to enterprises, little attention has paid on the adoption of integration software by Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The body of literature suggests that the findings that derive from the study of large enterprises can not be generalised and applied in SMEs due to the nature and characteristics of SMEs. In an attempt to study this area, research questions were raised. These research questions are investigated in this paper and supported the authors to propose a research model. The proposed model might be used to explain why SMEs and large organisations take decisions for the adoption of integration technologies focusing on different factors. The results of an empirical study carried out on a sample of 102 companies of any size in Taiwan are presented, aiming at highlighting any significant difference in the way SMEs and large companies approach integration technologies