Application of a Cloud-Based Supply Chain Management System to Achieve Mass Customization: Best Practices from the Automotive Industry

There are many competing attempts to define the cloud-based concept, although their common elements refer to a pool of networked, scalable and virtualized software/hardware resources, accessible over the network, which will easily accommodate the changing needs of end users (see Vaquero et al., 2009). Different definitions include the views on cloud-based systems as agile and scalable pools of computing resources, maintained by a new class of information technology (IT) vendors, usually referred to as Application Service Providers (ASPs). They are typically based on freely interchangeable software components (Web services), which are being orchestrated/ coordinated and provided with Web-based interfaces, to interact with the end users (Buyya et al., 2008). The majority of literature presupposes that cloud systems are maintained by commercial ASPs and made available to the buying customers (“public clouds”), although large organizations may require additional flexibility and data security, required by keeping the cloud infrastructure under their control (“private clouds”). Both internal and external virtualization/hosting of IT resources are used in the so-called “hybrid clouds” (Rimal et al., 2009).