New work practices - "Desktop as a Service" and its adoption by the micro enterprise

THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of the study was to investigate the readiness of micro enterprises to adopt a new service under development by a Finnish telecommunication company. The new service called "WebTop" aimed at delivering computing resources to knowledge workers based on the Desktop as a Service model. In addition to assessing the overall demand for such a service, the research was designed to advise the development team on a set of features and applications to be included in the value proposition of the service. The final goal was to advise the development team about the viability of the service and find triggers that could promote its adoption by the desired target group. DATA The data used throughout this research was collected in 2008 through desk research and by interviews. The purpose of the desk research was to find existing DaaS providers, analyze their value propositions and revenue models. The primary data was collected by the means of face-to-face interviews with CEOs or owners of 31 Finnish micro enterprises. RESULTS The results indicate an overall lack of triggers of adopting DaaS as a new way of acquiring and using IT resources. The current IT needs of the micro enterprise are sufficiently satisfied by current practices. The finding indicate that the structure of decision making in the company and the need for customer relationship management tools and collaboration and communication tools are most likely to influence the adoption of cloud computing based services