After a company has justified an IT investment, it must then decide how to pursue it. As with cost–benefit analyses, there are several options for acquiring IT applications. To select the best option, companies must make a series of business decisions. The fundamental decisions are:

• How much computer code does the company want to write? A company can choose to use a totally prewritten application (to write no computer code), to customize a prewritten application (to write some computer code), or to custom-write an entire application (write all new computer code).

• How will the company pay for the application? Once the company has decided how much computer code to write, it must decide how to pay for it. With prewritten applications or customized prewritten applications, companies can buy them or lease them. With totally custom applications, companies use internal funding.

• Where will the application run? The next decision is whether to run the application on the company’s platform or on someone else’s platform. In other words, the company can employ either a software-as-a-service vendor or an application service provider.

• Where will the application originate? Prewritten applications can be open-source software or they can come from a vendor. The company may choose to customize prewritten open-source applications or prewritten proprietary applications from vendors. Further, it may customize applications in-house or outsource the customization. Finally, it can write totally custom applications in-house or outsource this process.