BENEFITS AND SUCCESS FACTORS OF OPEN-SOURCE WEB SERVICES DEVELOPMENT PLATFORMS FOR SMALL SOFTWARE HOUSES

Valter De Assis Moreno,Josir Cardoso Gomes

doi:10.4301/s1807-17752012000300008

Abstract

It is usually difficult for companies to keep up with the development of new information technologies and adapt to them in face of the opportunities and threats their advances may represent. This is especially true for small and medium enterprises (SME) in emerging economies, where resources tend to be scarce and markets more volatile. This paper describes an action research conducted in a small Brazilian software house that adopted an open-source Web Services development platform in order to improve its software development process. Data analysis revealed critical success factors (CSF) in the adoption process, as well as specific benefits and barriers prone to be faced by small software houses in their adoption efforts. In the process of overcoming such barriers, SME may acquire intellectual capital that represents an essential resource to ensure their competitiveness and survival in emerging economies.

Highlights

In order to meet an increasing need for information storage, recovery and exchange in companies, IS researchers and professionals have been looking into new information systems development (ISD) tools, methods and techniques
As an initial attempt to close this gap, this paper reports the major findings of an exploratory action research (Thiollent, 1997; Baskerville & Wood-Harper, 1996) that investigated the adoption of a Web Services (WS) open-source ISD platform by a small software house in Brazil
Project completion time could be shortened and no investments in training and hiring new developers would be necessary. These benefits are certainly significant to small software houses such as JGSoft, which normally have to conduct their projects under strict budget limitations and tight schedules

Summary

Introduction

In order to meet an increasing need for information storage, recovery and exchange in companies, IS researchers and professionals have been looking into new information systems development (ISD) tools, methods and techniques. IT management has to resort to integrated software packages with high costs and deep impact on several areas of the organization (e.g.; structure, processes, skills, relationships) To address such problems, the architectures based on components and, more recently, on services (SOA – Service Oriented Architecture) have been developed by the software industry, aiming at the improvement of ISD processes and a better alignment with ever changing business needs. Web Services have become an important resource to leverage the benefits of social networks to both users and companies (e.g., Enders et al, 2008; Paredes-Valverde et al, 2012) Social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin have been growing exponentially over the last decade (Henrikson, 2011), and are increasingly seen by organizations as critical channels to reach and understand their customers, collaborate and share knowledge, and conduct business (e.g., Pookulangara & Koesler, 2011)

Methods

Results

Conclusion