Enterprise information systems as a service: enterprise software from the cloud follows patterns from industry

This paper draws an analogy between developments in enterprise software and in capital goods manufacturing industry. Many branches of manufacturing industry, especially automotive industry, have grown in maturity by moving from craftsmanship to mass production. These industries subsequently move from mass production towards mass customization, introducing lean practices. Finally, full maturity is reached by increased servitization. This paper analyzes the developments of enterprise information systems in the same terms. The paper shows that the enterprise software follows a similar pattern as capital goods manufacturing industries, with a few interesting differences. Enterprise software “from the cloud” is comparable to the move towards product-service systems (PSS) in other branches of industry. However, lean delivery of enterprise applications is still at the threshold of being practised. Lean delivery requires single versions of applications and delivery in multi-tenant mode. Combining lean delivery with large variety requires automated configuration of application systems components.