The Proliferation Of Professional Software Services Empirical Study

Software industry is a strategic industry in the 21st Century, as well as the core of modern high-tech industry. As the software product competition is evolving to service competition, Professional Software Service, the new style of software business service, is going to be the main direction of the software industry. So celebrating the diffusion of Professional Software Service, as well as penetrating it into all of the traditional industries to help them upgrade, is an important means for constructing the national competitive advantages.Focusing on influencing factors of diffusion level, this paper tries to identify the key factors, explore ways to improve the performance of Professional Software Service in China by controlling key influencing factors. The whole paper is divided into three parts: theoretical discussion, empirical study and conclusion.In the part of theoretical discussion, firstly we identify the definition and characteristics of Professional Software Service. Then we review the evolvement and development trend of innovation diffusion research;mainly review the different innovation diffusion theories and the related factors research through 4 distinctive styles, including economics, sociology, organizational learning and bandwagon. All of these above highlight the fact that Professional Software Service diffusion is a very important new research field. Based on the research of key success factors in Professional Software Service and innovation diffusion before, and the practice of new service diffusion in China, the author forms main idea of the whole paper and puts forward the corresponding hypothesis and conceptual model. In the second part, by questionnaire investigation among more than 88 companies with experiences of Professional Software Service and quantitative analysis of the results, the author finds 10 factors that influence diffusion of the Professional Software Service in China in terms of the characteristics of new service, organizational factors, environmental factors and bandwagon pressure. Then further validation of the relationship between those factors and the level of diffusion is given, in order to find out the key influencing factors and the model, which shows the relationship between the influencing factors and diffusion level. The research can be divided into two stages: the first stage is expert visiting and literature reading, trying to find out ways to measure the level of diffusion and some influencing factors. The second stage is questionnaire investigation in companies with experience of Professional Software Service and results analysis.In the last part, firstly the author makes the analysis of the research results. Based on the explanations, some advices on how to improve the diffusion of Professional Software Service in China is provided. Finally, the thesis concludes the whole essay and points out the prospect to further research in future.