On the Windy Road to Become a Service Provider: Reflections from Designing a Mission Critical Information System Provided as a Service

During the recent years, the information system landscape has drastically changed -- system owners do not want to carry the responsibilities and risks at the same level as they previously did. To this end, a major shift is called for in the way the information systems are developed, deployed, and operated. A more demand-centric view, accurately meeting the needs and expectations of the end user as well as the system owners, leads to systems delivered as a service. In this paper we present experiences gathered during project ERICA, a large-scale mission critical information system for the emergency services in Finland made available to the end users as a service by a private company.