A Review of the Current Level of Support to Aid Decisions for Migrating to Cloud Computing

© 2016 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Cloud computing provides an innovative delivery model that enables enterprises to reduce operational costs and improve flexibility and scalability. Organisations wishing to migrate their legacy systems to the cloud often need to go through a difficult and complicated decision-making process. This can be due to multiple factors including restructuring IT resources, the still evolving nature of the cloud environment, and the continuous expansion of the services offered. These have increased the requirement for tools and techniques to help the decision-making process for migration. Although significant contributions have been made in this area, there are still many aspects which require further support. This paper evaluates the existing level of support to aid the decision-making process. It examines the complexity of decisions, evaluates the current state of Decision Support Systems in respect of migrating to the cloud, and analyses three models that proposed support for the migration processes. This paper identifies the need for a coherent approach for supporting the whole decision-making process. Further, it explores possible new approaches for addressing the complex issues involved in decision-making for migrating to the cloud

CPA firm’s cloud auditing provider for performance evaluation and improvement: an empirical case of China

While CPA (Certified Public Accountant) firms utilize cloud auditing technologies to generate auditing reports and convey information to their clients in the Internet of Things (IoT) Era, they often cannot determine whether cloud auditing is a secure and effective form of communication with clients. Strategies related to cloud auditing provider evaluation and improvement planning are inherently multiple attribute decision making (MADM) issues and are very important to the auditor industry. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes an evaluation and improvement planning model to be a reference for CPA firms selecting the best cloud auditing provider, and illustrates an application of such a model through an empirical case study. The DEMATEL (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) approach is first used to analyze the interactive influence relationship map (IIRM) between the criteria and dimensions of cloud auditing technology. DANP (DEMATEL-based ANP) is then employed to calculate the influential weights of the dimensions and criteria. Finally, the modified VIKOR method is utilized to provide improvement priorities for performance cloud auditing provider satisfaction. Based on expert interviews, the recommendations for improvement priorities are privacy, security, processing integrity, availability, and confidentiality. This approach is expected to support the auditor industry to systematically improve their cloud auditing provider selection

Service recommendation and selection in centralized and decentralized environments.

With the increasing use of web services in everyday tasks we are entering an era of Internet of Services (IoS). Service discovery and selection in both centralized and decentralized environments have become a critical issue in the area of web services, in particular when services having similar functionality but different Quality of Service (QoS). As a result, selecting a high quality service that best suits consumer requirements from a large list of functionally equivalent services is a challenging task. In response to increasing numbers of services in the discovery and selection process, there is a corresponding increase of service consumers and a consequent diversity in Quality of Service (QoS) available. Increases in both sides leads to a diversity in the demand and supply of services, which would result in the partial match of the requirements and offers. Furthermore, it is challenging for customers to select suitable services from a large number of services that satisfy consumer functional requirements. Therefore, web service recommendation becomes an attractive solution to provide recommended services to consumers which can satisfy their requirements.In this thesis, first a service ranking and selection algorithm is proposed by considering multiple QoS requirements and allowing partially matched services to be counted as a candidate for the selection process. With the initial list of available services the approach considers those services with a partial match of consumer requirements and ranks them based on the QoS parameters, this allows the consumer to select suitable service. In addition, providing weight value for QoS parameters might not be an easy and understandable task for consumers, as a result an automatic weight calculation method has been included for consumer requirements by utilizing distance correlation between QoS parameters. The second aspect of the work in the thesis is the process of QoS based web service recommendation. With an increasing number of web services having similar functionality, it is challenging for service consumers to find out suitable web services that meet their requirements. We propose a personalised service recommendation method using the LDA topic model, which extracts latent interests of consumers and latent topics of services in the form of probability distribution. In addition, the proposed method is able to improve the accuracy of prediction of QoS properties by considering the correlation between neighbouring services and return a list of recommended services that best satisfy consumer requirements. The third part of the thesis concerns providing service discovery and selection in a decentralized environment. Service discovery approaches are often supported by centralized repositories that could suffer from single point failure, performance bottleneck, and scalability issues in large scale systems. To address these issues, we propose a context-aware service discovery and selection approach in a decentralized peer-to-peer environment. In the approach homophily similarity was used for bootstrapping and distribution of nodes. The discovery process is based on the similarity of nodes and previous interaction and behaviour of the nodes, which will help the discovery process in a dynamic environment. Our approach is not only considering service discovery, but also the selection of suitable web service by taking into account the QoS properties of the web services. The major contribution of the thesis is providing a comprehensive QoS based service recommendation and selection in centralized and decentralized environments. With the proposed approach consumers will be able to select suitable service based on their requirements. Experimental results on real world service datasets showed that proposed approaches achieved better performance and efficiency in recommendation and selection process.N/

Cloud computing teknologia ezagutzen enpresaren ikuspuntutik: ezagutza osoa lortzeko ikuspegi berri bat eta hartzea gauzatzeko tresna berri bat

239 p.Gorakadan dauden teknologiak ikaragarriko inpaktua dute enpresengan eta enpresarentamainaren arabera eragin hau latzagoa izan daiteke. Zentzu horretan, enpresa ertain eta txikiekberrikuntza teknologikoa gauzatzeko gaitasun txikiagoa eduki ohi dute, bai aldakuntzarenaurkako jarrerengatik bai alderdi ekonomikoarengatik. Horretaz gain, mota honetakoteknologiek interes nabarmena pizten dute ikertzaileen artean, Iragarpen Teknologikoarenesparruan lan egiten dutenen artean bereziki.Tesi honen lehenengo helburua gorakadan dagoen teknologia baten ezagutza eta iragarpenagauzatzeko ikuspegi berri bat aurkeztea da. Ikuspegi honen erabileraren bitartez, teknologiaberri hauen ezagutza egituratu oso bat lortuko da, etorkizuneko joerak antzemateaz gain.Ezagutza honen bitartez teknologia hauen hartzeak aurkez ditzakeen oztopoak txikiagotu nahidira, baita teknologia beraren azterketan eztabaida berriak sortu ere. Ikuspegia eraikitzekoEzagutzaren Egituraketa eta Iragarpen Teknologiko esparruen metodoen azterketa, aukeraketaeta moldaketa burutu da eta erabilgarritasuna frogatzeko Cloud Computing teknologiari aplikatuegin zaio.Tesiak bigarren helburutzat Cloud Computing teknologia hartzearen erronkanbaliogarria izan daitekeen erabaki-hartze tresna berri bat aurkeztea du. Gorakadan daudenteknologien hartzearen erronkan hainbat ikuspegi ezberdin aurkitzen dira. Lan honen kasuanikuspegi praktiko bat aurkezten da, tresna erreal eta erabilgarri batean oinarritua. Horrela,garatutako tresnak emandako gomendioetan oinarrituta, erabaki-hartzaile bat bere Cloud Bide(Cloud Road) propioa sortzeko gai izan beharko litzateke, hau da, enpresan Cloud Computingirtenbideak inplementatzeko bidai orria. Las tecnologías emergentes tienen un impacto enorme en las empresas, siendo el tamaño de la empresa un factor importante a la hora de cuantificar dicho impacto. En ese sentido, las pequeñas y medianas empresas presentan una menor capacidad de renovación tecnológica, bien por actitudes negativas al cambio bien por una menor capacidad económica. Además, este tipo de tecnologías despiertan un gran interés en la comunidad científica, especialmente entre los investigadores que trabajan en el ámbito de la Prospectiva Tecnológica.El primer objetivo de esta tesis es presentar un nuevo enfoque para el conocimiento y prospectiva completa de una tecnología emergente. Mediante la aplicación de este enfoque se consigue, además de un conocimiento estructurado de la tecnología, un análisis de las posibles tendencias futuras de la misma. Esta información permitirá reducir las barreras que puede presentar su adopción por parte de las empresas, además de generar debate en torno a su estado y evolución en un ámbito más académico. El enfoque se ha construido mediante el estudio,selección y adaptación de métodos del ámbito de la Prospectiva Tecnológica y la Estructuracióndel Conocimiento. Finalmente, se ha aplicado a la tecnología Cloud Computing para demostrarsu utilidad. El segundo objetivo de la tesis es presentar una herramienta que facilite la toma de decisiones en el desafío que supone la adopción de la tecnología Cloud Computing. El problema de la adopción del Cloud Computing se ha abordado desde diferentes perspectivas en la literatura relacionada. En el caso de esta tesis se aborda desde una herramienta real y eminentemente práctica. En base a las recomendaciones aportadas por la herramienta, los tomadores de decisiones podrán crear su propia hoja de ruta hacia el Cloud (Cloud Road). Es decir, la hoja de ruta para implementar las soluciones Cloud en su propia empresa

An investigation of decision support knowledge production, transfer and adoption for it outsourcing

Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) is a widely-adopted strategy for IT governance. ITO decisions are very complicated and challenging for many organisations. During the past three decades of ITO research, numerous decision support artefacts (e.g. frameworks, models, tools) to support organisational ITO decisions have been described in academic publications. However, the scope, rigour, relevance and adoption of this research by industry practitioners had not been assessed. This study investigates the production, transfer and adoption of academic research-generated knowledge for ITO decision support through multiple perspectives of ITO researchers and practitioners (e.g. IT managers, IT consultants) to provide insights into the research problem. A mixed-methods research approach underpinned by the critical realism paradigm is employed in this study. The study comprised three phases. In Phase A, the scope of extant research for supporting ITO decisions is identified through a systematic literature review and critical assessment of the rigour and relevance of this body of research is conducted using a highly regarded research framework. One hundred and thirty three articles on IT outsourcing (including cloud sourcing) were identified as ITO decision support academic literature. These articles suggested a range of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), optimisation and simulation methods to support different IT outsourcing decisions. The assessment of these articles raised concerns about the limited use of reference design theories, validation and naturalistic evaluation in ITO decision support academic literature. Recommendations to enhance the rigour and relevance of ITO decision support research are made in this thesis. Phase B involved interviewing and surveying academic researchers who published academic literature on ITO decision support artefacts. This phase reports researchers’ reflections on their ITO research experience and knowledge transfer activities undertaken by them. The findings indicate researchers’ motivations, knowledge transfer mechanisms, and communication/ interaction channels with industry may explain effective knowledge transfer. Impact-minded researchers were significantly more effective than publication-minded researchers in knowledge transfer. In Phase C, interviews and a survey of practitioners engaged in IT outsourcing shed light on use of academic-generated knowledge. Academic research was the least used source of decision-making knowledge among ITO practitioners. Practitioners preferred to seek advice from their peers, IT vendors and consultants to inform their ITO decision making. Two communities of users and non-users of academic research were identified in our sample of ITO practitioners, with non-users forming the majority. Six factors that may influence the use of academic research by practitioners were identified. Non-users of academic research held perceptions that academic research was not timely, required too much time to read, was far from the real world and that it was not a commonly-used knowledge source for practitioners. Also, non-users of academic research read academic research less frequently and did not perceive themselves as an audience for academic research. This study engaged two fields of research: ITO decision support and academic knowledge transfer/utilisation (including research-practice gap). ITO decision support research provide the specific context for a critical assessment of academic knowledge production, transfer and adoption. For ITO DSS, this study identified the scope, rigour and relevance of the field, and improvement opportunities. This study confirms that a research-practice gap exists in the ITO decision support field as previously suggested by some scholars. Also, this study made a significant contribution to the highly complex and contested field of research utilisation and the research-practice gap. The relationship between research and practice in terms of knowledge production, transfer and utilisation is modelled using social system theory. Multiple theories are applied through a retroductive (abductive) analysis to shed light on the root causes of the research-practice gap. This study suggests that the lack of adequate appreciation of research relevance in academic reward schemes and the academic publishing structure are the main root causes of the research-practice gap in the knowledge production side. Moreover, various institutional mechanisms exist in knowledge transfer and adoption domains that influence the knowledge adoption channels of practitioners. As a result, academic research does not become a priority source of ITO decision support knowledge for practitioners. This study suggests that to overcome the barriers to academic research adoption by practitioners, the effective structural coupling mechanism between the system of science (knowledge production domain) and organisation systems (knowledge consumption domain) needs to be identified and activated

Infrastructure-as-a-Service Usage Determinants in Enterprises

The thesis focuses on the research question, what the determinants of Infrastructure-as-a-Service usage of enterprises are. A wide range of IaaS determinants is collected for an IaaS adoption model of enterprises, which is evaluated in a Web survey. As the economical determinants are especially important, they are separately investigated using a cost-optimizing decision support model. This decision support model is then applied to a potential IaaS use case of a large automobile manufacturer