Business Process as a Service—A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The subject of the article is Business Process as a Service (BPaaS). Contemporary companies face a number of challenges. It determines the continuous evolution of IT solutions. Organizational management methods, hardware infrastructure features, IT system functionalities and methods of their delivery to end users undergo evolution. Business Process Management (BPM) and Cloud Computing (CC) is gaining in importance. In management sciences, it can be observed the progressive evolution of views and the formation of new paradigms based on processability. Common models of CC services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) have evolved into BPaaS model, which according to analytical companies already has a significant market share and is expected to grow in the coming years. The combination of BPM and CC can be a solution that will help modern enterprises effectively face the challenges they are exposed to. BPaaS is one of the forms combining the potential of BPM and CC. The growing interest in BPaaS does not go hand in hand with the appropriate number of scientific publications dealing with this issue broadly. No systematic literature review has been identified. In addition, the market and the literature also identify terms such as Cloud BPM, BPMaaS, Process Cloud, which relate to aspects of BPM and CC other than BPaaS—that may impede interpretation and unambiguous determination of what BPaaS is and what it is not. The above facts prompted the author to analyze BPaaS and conduct a systematic literature review. The purpose of the article is to present the details of the review, its results, discussion and summaries in the field of BPaaS definitions, benefits, functionality, architecture and implementation issues.