Study On The PaaS Mode Of Cloud Service Supply Chain Business Model And Supply Chain Coordination

Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm that allows users to conveniently access computing resources as pay-per-use services. Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are terms that denote new developments in the software industry that are completely changing the way software is produced, consumed, and distributed. In particular new PaaS business models have a disruptive effect on existing business models and require thorough business model innovation in the software industry. Whereas cloud offerings such as Salesforce’s Force.com and Google’s App Engine are rapidly gaining a large user base, enterprise software’s migration towards the cloud is still in its infancy. Despite their impact, PaaS supply chain models have not been considered in a sufficient manner in literature yet. The paper at hand contributes to this gap by providing an overview of typical characteristics of PaaS based on a systematic literature review on cloud service, service supply chain, and revenue-sharing theory of supply chain coordination. With Osterwalder and Pigneur’s business model as a framework, existing PaaS business models based on case studies are classified, and this paper finally develop an evolutionary PaaS supply chain lifecycle model:technology-based PaaS, market-based PaaS and eventually a platform-based which is a relatively mature cloud market with multiple players offering various services. The participants, service processes and manage contents involved in different develop stages are then given with detailed analysis. Then the revenue-sharing theory and game theory are applied in the coordination of the supply chain composed of one ISV and one platform under different developing stages to optimize the entire supply chain.