Maria A. Anikanova - Cloud Solutions Specialist, Small and Medium Solutions and Partners Unit, Microsoft Russia.
Address: 17/1, Krylatskaya Street, Moscow, 121614, Russian Federation.
E-mail: v-maanik@microsoft.com

Alexander F. Morgunov - Associate Professor, Department of Corporate Information Systems, School of Business Informatics, Faculty of Business and Management, National Research University Higher School of Economics. 
Address: 20, Myasnitskaya Street, Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: amorgunov@hse.ru

      The article is dedicated to the research of the possibility and viability of small companies business processes automation using public cloud SaaS applications. One of the fundamental advantages of cloud solutions is IT infrastructure simplification along with high-level scalability and rich functionality. Cloud counterparts of such “heavy” on-premise software as ERP or CRM systems do not require large financial investments and time expenditures, due to a more simple and agile platform, which support requires less effort, giving IT specialists an opportunity to reorient at more important projects. One of the most significant advantages of such solutions is the fact that the major part of IT expenses can be converted from capital to operational costs, which gives small business companies the possibility not to withdraw a big amount of money from corporate cash flow.
      The cost of SaaS applications is much lower than one-time expenditure on on-premise products implementation. However, the cost of error for small organizations on the stage of decision-making concerning IT infrastructure construction and management (including SaaS-based architecture) is still high, for any further IT infrastructure changes will require significant additional costs and can turn out to be critical for the company’s budget. That is why the set of criteria, which allows companies to define the expediency of public cloud applications technological possibilities usage on the stage of small business IT-infrastructure planning, is observed in the article. All developed criteria are divided into three main groups: functional, financial & economic, and technical; they are described in details separately, and then ranged according to their importance using expert evaluation method, involving recognized IT experts. The formula was developed using quantitative estimations, which helped to derive the specific index, evaluating reasonability of concrete business processes automation with the help of public cloud SaaS applications.
      The article materials will prove to be of interest to information systems integration specialists and small business decision makers in order to estimate optimization of IT costs.