A study of cloud computing technology adoption by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Gauteng Province.

Master of Commerce in Information Systems and Technology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.This study investigates small and medium enterprises in the IT sector located within the province of Gauteng, to ascertain their perceptions on the benefits and risks associated with cloud computing, and to assess the extent of usage of cloud computing services. Fifty-two IT SMEs took part into this research and the findings revealed that respondents were IT consultants, IT managers, executive managers, middle managers, company owners, employees with IT expertise or knowledge, as well as IT specialists from each selected IT SME. IT SMEs that took part into the research had between 1-200 employees with primary users of computing devices being employees followed by clients. The findings revealed that IT SMEs operated in the following three sectors: computer/IT, mobile business, as well as digital solution. These organisations were in existence between one month and twenty years. The research findings indicated that 71.4% of respondents used cloud computing and 28.6% of respondents did not use cloud computing. The findings also indicated that 75% of non-users were planning to use cloud computing as compared to 25% of non-users, who were not planning to use cloud computing. The findings revealed that non-users were likely to use SaaS as compared to other cloud services. Among the challenges faced by non-users in the usage of cloud computing, the following were identified as very important ones: awareness, implementation, complexities, as well as risks. The findings revealed that the following services were highly likely to be used by users: SaaS, IaaS, as well as PaaS. The following factors were identified by users as highly influential in their decision to adopt cloud computing: improved service level management, cost-efficiency, standard-based security, as well as risks. The following factors were identified as important benefits in cloud computing by users: cost-efficiency, lower-implementation, scalability, saving time and cost, sustainability, customisation, as well as virtualisation. The findings revealed the following factors as important concerns and limitations in cloud computing: risks, availability, security issues, regulatory requirements, awareness, performance, impact of security, impact of challenges, impact of availability, trust and transparency, shared technology issues, disaster recovery, service level agreement, virtualisation, as well as policy integration. The findings also revealed that service level agreement should be the foundation for cloud computing adoption

A trust management solution in the context of hybrid clouds

International audienceCloud computing is a revolutionary paradigm which enables on-demand provisioning of computing resources. Resources are delivered to cloud consumers in the form of infrastructure, platform and software services. These resources are deployed on three different models: private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds. In hybrid cloud context, private clouds externalize resources and invoke services from a public cloud when needed. However, in such a specific inter-cloud environment risks may arise. In fact, private cloud users often interact with cloud providers for services provisioning such as infrastructure, platforms and software. However, they are not sufficiently assured about how credible the data computed by these resources they have entrusted. This is due to clouds autonomy preservation, difference in control policy definitions and lack of transparency in clouds. In this paper, we propose a preventive/detective approach for assessing private cloud to select a trustworthy public cloud service. The solution is based on a mediation as a service that ensures the role of trust manager for the private cloud