A Case Study of an Organizational Continuum of a Technological Platform in a Japanese Accounting Cloud Service

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify an organizational continuum of a technological platform development in a Japanese accounting cloud service. The authors continuously have been studying an accounting cloud service, which adopts two-sided markets structure and freemium business model on a core and periphery platform with modular designs. As the results of our case study, the authors obtain three findings. First, the Japanese accounting cloud service, which runs its business with regional banks in retail banking, has been exploiting its platform into partners' customers. Second, the accounting cloud service has been building up from a supplychain platform to an industrial platform in retail banking in four years since its entrepreneurship. Third, the accounting cloud service has been transforming its cloud-to-cloud service connections from weak-tied interfaces developed by other companies to its own strong-tied interfaces. Therefore, startingup cloud service providers should not only utilize weak-tied interfaces to invite two-sides onto its platform to establish a structural hole within its two-sided markets structure, but also should develop its own strong-tied interfaces and indirect ties to tighten upon its two-sided markets structure to realize values buried in its cloud ecosystem.