Abstract
Although customization plays a significant role in the provision of software as a service (SaaS), delivering a customizable SaaS application that reflects the tenant’s specific requirements with acceptable level of quality is a challenge. Drawing on a pr-developed software customization model for SaaS quality, two fundamental objectives of this study were to determine whether different software customization approaches have direct impacts on SaaS quality, and also to assess the construct reliability and construct validity of the model. A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect data from 244 software professionals with experience in SaaS development. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the construct reliability, construct validity, and research hypotheses. The measurement model assessment suggested that the six-construct model with 39 items exhibited good construct reliability and construct validity. The findings of the structural model assessment show that all customization approaches other than the integration approach significantly influence the quality of SaaS applications. The findings also indicate that both configuration and composition approaches have positive impacts on SaaS quality, while the impacts of the other approaches are negative. The empirical assessment and evaluation of this model, which features a rich set of information, provides considerable benefits to both researchers and practitioners.
Highlights
Customization plays a crucial part in the rendering of software as a service (SaaS) to various tenants [1,2,3], as the interface, business logic, and data are highly likely to vary for every tenant [4]
The model evaluation revealed that the measurement model with Relative Chi-Sq (≤3) = 1.975; comparative fit index (CFI) (≥0.9) = 0.867; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (≤0.08) = 0.063 did not meet the model fit requirements, because none of the Incremental fit indices met the requirements
It can be concluded that 37% of the variation in the SaaS quality was explained by the variations in the configuration, integration, extension, modification, and composition variables at a 95%
Summary
Customization plays a crucial part in the rendering of software as a service (SaaS) to various tenants [1,2,3], as the interface, business logic, and data are highly likely to vary for every tenant [4]. All elements of a SaaS application (such as the design elements of the GUI, business practices, and databases) are impacted by tenant-oriented customization [6]. A tenant’s requirement changes usually surface after the development of applications and services; the run-time specific customization pertinent to a tenant should be provided during the same application instance [1,7,9,10], and it should not impact tenant isolation and application availability [7,10]. SaaS applications do not possess extensibility comparable to that of licensed software products [11]
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