Infrastructure as a Service: An analysis of the circular effectiveness

Abstract

This is the English report for the first academic study into the Infrastructure As a Service (IAAS) business model as part of the De Circulaire Weg partnerprogram. This research asks the question: Under what conditions does the applied As a Service model on infrastructure lead or not to a higher level of circularity and lower or equal life cycle costs? To answer this question, we followed and evaluated seven pilots that experimented with IAAS in practice at the municipalities of Amersfoort, Utrecht, and Amsterdam and in the provinces of Overijssel, North-Holland, and North Brabant. We looked at the As-a-Service level, the degree of circularity, and the degree of the costs. In addition, we also outlined the underlying circumstances within which the pilots were carried out, such as the organizational, financial, and technical similarities and differences. Overall, we can conclude that each pilot had a unique set of circumstances and that they each walked their own path with the As-a-Service. This demonstrates the importance of contextual conditions for establishing a successful model. We found these conditions in the patterns we discovered in the data from these pilots.