Abstract
As the business environment is becoming increasingly more global, business corporations have to survive in a much more competitive market place than ever before. Under such severe market conditions, it is almost impossible for a business corporation on its own to provide high-quality services and products quicker than other competitors which meet with customer's satisfaction.
It is inter-enterprise networks which enable big business corporations to share resources, to focus their business resources on their core business and thus to achieve good business performance. The medium-sized and small companies, which have bigger constraints on management resources than giant companies, are said to be far behind the large corporations in utilizing IT, building effective systems, and obtaining the required human resources.
In this paper, we are going to examine the Japanese branch of a leading global company. The company has independently built up an inter-enterprise network using open source software without any financial and technical support from its headquarters. We will discuss the merits of introducing open source software from the view point of the user.
This instance presents a particular business model that specializes in one business domain and has a strong constraint on new investment. It also has some characteristics in common with the mediumsized and small companies and the companies with a self-supporting accounting system. We try to show the potential of a network solution for medium-sized and small companies.
