Finance Business Initiatives Report on Cloud Computing Analysis

This report provides an analysis of finance business initiatives, focusing on the application of Porter's Five Forces to the cloud computing industry, specifically in relation to Bottomline Technologies. The report examines the competitive landscape, including the rivalry among competitors like Apple, IBM, and Google, considering their varying service offerings (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS). It assesses the threat of new entrants, considering factors like low initial investment and marketing time in the SaaS market. Buyer and supplier power are also analyzed, highlighting the bargaining power dynamics in the SaaS and PaaS markets, as well as the impact of brand loyalty. The analysis also considers the threat of substitutes, such as open-source computing, and how Bottomline Technologies leverages services like ISO and SWIFT to gain a competitive advantage. The report concludes by referencing key sources to support the analysis.

Running head: FINANCE BUSINESS INITIATIVES
Finance business initiatives
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1FINANCE BUSINESS INITIATIVES
Porters Five forces Analysis on Cloud computing industry with regard to Bottomline
Technology Company
The above diagram represented the porter’s five forces for the analysis of cloud
computing market with regard to Bottomline Technologies
Cloud market condition – various organization’s presence in the cloud computing sector are
resulting into less concentrated market. This lower level of concentration indicates a market
sector that is highly competitive. Existence of mostly all the giants from the industry like
Apple, IBM, Google are also the indication for the high presence of rivalry between
competitors. Though the services offered by them varies on the basis of PaaS, Iaas and SaaS
or the combination of any two of them, even under the same area of service, the competition
is expected to be high due to the low differentiation of products. However, the products of
Bottoline technologies assist the clients to remove the business complexities with regard to
the payments and develop a payment system that is secure, simple and streamlined
(Bottomline.com 2017).

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New entrants – under the cloud computing market the chances of the new comers are high
as the requirement for preliminary investment is low, market exit barrier is low and time
required for marketing is low. Further, under the PaaS market, the existence of industry
giants like Google, IBM and Apple creates the high barriers for entering that can be reduced
through differentiation and innovation of product. On the other hand, under the SaaS market,
threat of new entrants is low as requirement for initial investment and the existence of higher
level of risk.
Buyers – the bargaining powers of the buyer are expected to be high under the SaaS market
due to cost involved in switching market is low and availability of various choices. Under the
PaaS market, bargaining capacity of the buyers rare expected to remain low due to high cost
of switching (Lian, Yen and Wang 2014). However, the growth expectation and complicated
business of Bottomline Technologies are exposing them to loosing of customers.
Suppliers – suppliers under the market of cloud computing are the providers for cloud
services. Under the SaaS market, the supplier’s bargaining power is low due to the low cost
of switching of the buyers and the present of various players in the market (Hashem et al.
2015). However, under the PaaS market the supplier’s bargaining power is high due to the
lock-in-leads for the vendor. However, under SaaS, the brand loyalty is only way the in
which the suppliers can achieve some of the bargaining powers.
Technology development – threat associated with the substitutes for all the services related to
cloud computing technology are associated in growth phase itself. The open resource for the
computing may be the only substitute for the cloud computing. However, the SMEs are
expected to prefer the cloud computing due to the consulting services availability from the
suppliers and the non-existent of the shifting cost (Erl, Puttini and Mahmood 2013).
However, Bottomline Technologies has developed various services like ISO and SWIFT for

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carrying out the communication among corporations and banks which enabled to get the
competitive advantages over the competitors.

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Reference
Bottomline.com. (2017). Simple, smart & secure business payments | Bottomline
Technologies. [online] Available at: https://www.bottomline.com/uk/ [Accessed 20 Aug.
2017].
Erl, T., Puttini, R. and Mahmood, Z., 2013. Cloud computing: concepts, technology &
architecture. Pearson Education.
Hashem, I.A.T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N.B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A. and Khan, S.U., 2015. The
rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information
Systems, 47, pp.98-115.
Lian, J.W., Yen, D.C. and Wang, Y.T., 2014. An exploratory study to understand the critical
factors affecting the decision to adopt cloud computing in Taiwan hospital. International
Journal of Information Management, 34(1), pp.28-36.