A Systematic Mapping Study on the Current Status of Total Cost of Ownership for Information Systems

Abstract

Context: More and more industries and businesses are being run on software, making information systems a pivotal component of our lives. Because of globalization and harsh competition, strategic cost management has become essential to keep or gain competitive advantage. These two trends make the investigation of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for information systems crucial. Objective: We aim to identify how and to what extent TCO concept is used for information systems. Method: We used systematic mapping study (SMS) to identify the use of TCO in information systems context. We defined 7 research questions (RQs). To answer these RQs, we selected 75 relevant publications by applying our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: An increased interest in TCO for information systems is observed over the years. We classified these publications per research type and main motivation of dealing with TCO. The results show that 76% of the selected publications (opinion and solution proposal) lack validation and evaluation. The main motivation behind the 72% of the publications is reduction of TCO. According to the results, essential means of reducing TCO are cloud computing, SaaS model, and multi-tenancy. TCO calculations are also generally made to compare cloud-based infrastructures with in-house infrastructures and SaaS model with on-premise software. TCO is an important criterion in making investment decisions for information systems such as ERP, CRM. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first SMS on TCO for information systems. We observed limited collaboration between academia and industry. More collaboration would enable to gather data for validation and evaluation. Moreover, methods and frameworks for calculating TCO for information systems are needed. Benefit realization exercises will complement TCO analysis to assess success of investments in information systems.