Business value of in-memory technology – multiple-case study insights
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-07-2014-0212 |
| Published date | 07 October 2014 |
| Date | 07 October 2014 |
| Pages | 1396-1414 |
| Author | Rieke Bärenfänger,Boris Otto,Hubert Österle |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems |
Business value of in-memory
technology – multiple-case
study insights
Rieke Ba
¨renfa
¨nger
Institute of Information Management, University of St Gallen,
St Gallen, Switzerland
Boris Otto
Audi-Endowed Chair of Supply Net Order Management,
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany, and
Hubert O
¨sterle
Institute of Information Management, University of St Gallen,
St Gallen, Switzerland
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the business value of in-memory computing (IMC)
technology by analyzing its organizational impact in different application scenarios.
Design/methodology/approach – This research applies a multiple-case study methodology
analyzing five cases of IMC application scenarios in five large European industrial and service-sector
companies.
Findings – Results show that IMC can deliver business value in various applications ranging from
advanced analytic insights to support of real-time processes. This enables higher-level organizational
advantages like data-driven decision making, superior transparency of operations, and experience
with Big Data technology. The findings are summarized in a business value generation model
which captures the business benefits along with preceding enabling changes in the organizational
environment.
Practical implications – Results aid managers in identifying different application scenarios where
IMC technology may generate value for their organizations from business and IT management
perspectives. The research also sheds light on the socio-technical factors that influence the likelihood
of success or failure of IMC initiatives.
Originality/value – This research is among the first to model the business value creation process
of in-memory technology based on insights from multiple implemented applications in different
industries.
Keywords Big Data, Business value, Case study, In-memory computing,
In-memory data management
Paper type Case study
1. Introduction
A dominant theme in IS research is the quest for the business value contributed by
information technology (IT). This topic has been addressed in numerous studies, from
early contributions about the “productivity paradox” (Brynjolfsson, 1993; Pinsonneault
and Rivard, 1998), which questioned the positive impact of IT on organizational
performance altogether, to models proposing direct or indirect impact of IT on
company performance (Weill, 1992; Soh and Markus, 1995; Tanriverdi, 2006), and to the
stream of IT capability research (Bharadwaj, 2000; Liu et al., 2010, 2013). Despite this
knowledge base, there is still a need to deep en understanding about the exact way how
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 114 No.9, 2014
pp. 1396-1414
rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-07-2014-0212
1396
IMDS
114,9
IT resources create business value, especially in interaction with other organizational
resources such as processes and people (Melville et al., 2004).
In-memory database technology, also called in-memory data management or
in-memory computing (IMC) is a tec hnology that received considerable attention in
recent years. Its advocates anticipate a revolution for both business processes and
enterprise data management because of higher database perfo rmance and diverse
application fields. In-memory databases store data in main mem ory instead on disk,
which enables faster data access than hard disk I/O (Gill, 2007). Combined with other
database optimizations such as column storage and the associated data compression
potential, IMC may supp ort data-depending processes in ways impossible in the past.
Successful business applications of IMC are documented from areas like auto racing
(Vizard, 2013), sales customer interactions in the manufacturing industr y (Wust et al.,
2011), or financial reporting (Gill, 2007), albeit sometimes still in prototype status.
These case descriptions repor t optimized organizational processes because of faster
data processing and deeper insights into operations from flexible and fast analytics
applications. What is missing is a systematic evaluation of the business value
delivered by these IMC applications and the condition of the organizational context
that enabled the implementations.
Academics and practitioners alike therefore face several questions: Does faster
information processing help business processes in a significant way? Which
departments or specific business areas should be targeted first to be supp orted by
the new technology? Is IMC only enabler of very sp ecific scenarios or will it have a
positive impact on the entire IS architecture? Can it create com petitive advantage for
the company? Many studies have previously analyzed the value of IT in various
applications, both with respect to market perfor mance on firm level and operational
efficiency on subordinate organizational levels. Bearing this rese arch in mind, the aim
of this paper is to learn about the business value of IMC by assessing the tec hnology’s
organizational impact in different application scenarios. It addresses the following
research questions:
RQ1. Which application scenarios can be identified where IMC delivers business
value?
RQ2. How to analyze the organizational implications of IMC on a conceptual level?
A multiple-case study approach using data collected from five companies in different
industries is used to answer these questions.
The reminder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the existing
literature about IMC and business value of IT. Section 3 introduces the research
methodology with the case study approach. Section 4 describes and discusses the
case evidence and presents the conceptual model. The final section summarizes
contributions to research and practice.
2. T heoretical background
2.1 In-memory technology
IMC has first been described in database research publications in the 1980s
(Garcia-Molina and Salem, 1992; Eich, 1988; DeWitt et al., 1984). In-memory databases
hold all or at least most of the data permanently in main memory instead on disk. The
main advantage compared to conventional disk-based storage is the faster data access
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Business value of
in-memory
technology
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