A Systematic Mapping Study on the Current Status of Total Cost of Ownership for Information Systems

Year 2018, Volume: 11 Issue: 2, 131 - 145, 30.04.2018

Görkem Giray , Eray Tüzün

https://doi.org/10.17671/gazibtd.327544

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Context:
More and more industries and businesses are being run on software, making
information systems a pivotal component of our lives. Because of globalization
and harsh competition, strategic cost management has become essential to keep
or gain competitive advantage. These two trends make the investigation of Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) for information systems crucial.

Objective:
We aim to identify how and to what extent TCO concept is used for information
systems.

Method: We
used systematic mapping study (SMS) to identify the use of TCO in information
systems context. We defined 7 research questions (RQs). To answer these RQs, we
selected 75 relevant publications by applying our inclusion and exclusion
criteria.

Results: An
increased interest in TCO for information systems is observed over the years.
We classified these publications per research type and main motivation of
dealing with TCO. The results show that 76% of the selected publications
(opinion and solution proposal) lack validation and evaluation. The main
motivation behind the 72% of the publications is reduction of TCO.  According to the results, essential means of
reducing TCO are cloud computing, SaaS model, and multi-tenancy. TCO
calculations are also generally made to compare cloud-based infrastructures
with in-house infrastructures and SaaS model with on-premise software. TCO is
an important criterion in making investment decisions for information systems
such as ERP, CRM.

Conclusions:
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first SMS on TCO for
information systems. We observed limited collaboration between academia and
industry. More collaboration would enable to gather data for validation and
evaluation. Moreover, methods and frameworks for calculating TCO for
information systems are needed. Benefit realization exercises will complement
TCO analysis to assess success of investments in information systems. 

Keywords

Total cost of ownership, cost management, information systems, software-intensive systems, business applications

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