With the emergence of a new service delivery model, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), interest in quality management in the planning and operation of SaaS systems is increasing significantly. Most current quality management approaches for SaaS focus primarily on the perspective of service provider. They largely ignore the perspective of service customer as well as the nature of ongoing business relationship between the service provider and customer. Based on an extensive exploration of this relationship, the thesis research makes contributions in the following four areas: 1. A theory of SaaS business relationships is introduced by integrating an adapted quality paradigm with the notion of value co-creation (co-value) for the service provider and customer. In the theory, we define a specification of four quality-based service types (Ad-hoc, Defined, Managed and Strategic). 2. The theory is used as the foundation for building a model that assists service customers in SaaS evaluation in support of service planning and ongoing operations. 3. Based on the model, an evaluation tool is designed and used in a particular service area. As an example, a case study is undertaken to assist the decision making of email service adoption in the University of Alberta. 4. Two surveys are conducted to assist in the building and evolution of the evaluation model, as well as in the use of an email service evaluation tool.

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