Decision factors for outsourcing on-premise applications of institutions for higher education

Abstract

The outsourcing of IT applications is becoming more common in higher educational institutions. Today new applications are purchased from the 'cloud', however what to do with existing on-premise applications? Can they also be outsourced? If so, what factors does an institution for higher education have to consider when making the IT outsourcing decision of their on-premise applications? In this paper, a study described to answer the following research question: 'What decision factors should Dutch higher education institutions take into considerations in order to select a sourcing model for their on-premise applications?' First a literature study is performed in order to determine outsourcing factors that are already known. Subsequently, these factors are validated in four explorative interviews. Second a survey is constructed to further test the factors in a higher education context. Based on the interviews and survey results we found that fourteen factors are important for Dutch higher education institutions when outsourcing IT. Furthermore, we found that there is a hierarchy between these fourteen factors. Finally, our research suggests that there is a relationship between outsourcing decision factors and the sourcing models, a relationship which seems to be influenced by outsourcing objectives.