Abstract:

This paper concerns the phenomenon of the optimal economical choice of the data center services on the example of typical IT systems used by enterprises from the SME sector in Poland in the context of resource constraints and desirable functional characteristics. The basic assumption of the work is the fact that for the vast majority of enterprises from the SME sector building their own data center is an unprofitable process from the perspective of economic sciences, thus these enterprises must compare the implementation costs of IT systems development and its functional characteristics between the four dominant models of data center services: Server Colocation (DCaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). The aim of the paper is to assess the optimal economical model of data center services through the research in the field of economic sciences and computer science. Research methods are divided into two parts: first where author conducted a detailed conceptual review with theoretical background and second where detailed analysis of own research has been carried out using the comparative method and the observation method for the deliberate selection of variables, along with a synthetic analysis of variables through the minimax criterion for the Savage method of making the optimal decision variant. In the conclusion it was primarily stated that that the Software as a Service (SaaS) model is the most optimal solution in terms of economy and usability for the analysed enterprises of the SME sector in Poland. In the event of implementing IT systems in the SaaS cloud computing model, SME sector enterprises might most likely obtain relatively cheap and functional solutions that are available anywhere in the World, comparing to other models of data center services. Furthermore, SaaS model characterises by a short implementation time along with high level of security measured by the SLA percentage value.