Assessing A New IT Service Model, Cloud Computing

Recently we have witnessed a new kind of IT advancement. It is a phenomenon where various types of IT capabilities are centralized into data centers to ensure that such resources are available wherever and whenever they are needed. Cloud computing is the latest version of IT service practice that reflects such new trends in IT. Although cloud computing is considered a paradigm shift of IT service design and delivery in IS communities and generates large amounts of interest from business entities, few studies have examined this new IT and business environment. To better understand the organizational application of cloud computing, this study aims both to investigate economic payoffs from cloud computing investment and explore cloud computing adoption within the firm. This study is one of the first of its kinds to assess this new IT service model (i.e., cloud computing) using empirical validation. The proposed study can make contributions to the IS literature by (1) extending the boundary of the IS literature by reflecting the new trend of the IT industry; (2) continuing the debate about business value of IT; and (3) establishing a theoretical framework for cloud computing adoption, which can be applied to further studies on cloud computing

Determining Training Needs for Cloud Infrastructure Investigations using I-STRIDE

As more businesses and users adopt cloud computing services, security vulnerabilities will be increasingly found and exploited. There are many technological and political challenges where investigation of potentially criminal incidents in the cloud are concerned. Security experts, however, must still be able to acquire and analyze data in a methodical, rigorous and forensically sound manner. This work applies the STRIDE asset-based risk assessment method to cloud computing infrastructure for the purpose of identifying and assessing an organization's ability to respond to and investigate breaches in cloud computing environments. An extension to the STRIDE risk assessment model is proposed to help organizations quickly respond to incidents while ensuring acquisition and integrity of the largest amount of digital evidence possible. Further, the proposed model allows organizations to assess the needs and capacity of their incident responders before an incident occurs.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, 5th International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime; Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime, pp. 223-236, 201

New work practices - "Desktop as a Service" and its adoption by the micro enterprise

THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of the study was to investigate the readiness of micro enterprises to adopt a new service under development by a Finnish telecommunication company. The new service called "WebTop" aimed at delivering computing resources to knowledge workers based on the Desktop as a Service model. In addition to assessing the overall demand for such a service, the research was designed to advise the development team on a set of features and applications to be included in the value proposition of the service. The final goal was to advise the development team about the viability of the service and find triggers that could promote its adoption by the desired target group. DATA The data used throughout this research was collected in 2008 through desk research and by interviews. The purpose of the desk research was to find existing DaaS providers, analyze their value propositions and revenue models. The primary data was collected by the means of face-to-face interviews with CEOs or owners of 31 Finnish micro enterprises. RESULTS The results indicate an overall lack of triggers of adopting DaaS as a new way of acquiring and using IT resources. The current IT needs of the micro enterprise are sufficiently satisfied by current practices. The finding indicate that the structure of decision making in the company and the need for customer relationship management tools and collaboration and communication tools are most likely to influence the adoption of cloud computing based services

The Strategy of the Commons: Modelling the Annual Cost of Successful ICT Services for European Research

The provision of ICT services for research is increasingly using Cloud services to complement the traditional federation of computing centres. Due to the complex funding structure and differences in the basic business model, comparing the cost-effectiveness of these options requires a new approach to cost assessment. This paper presents a cost assessment method addressing the limitations of the standard methods and some of the initial results of the study. This acts as an illustration of the kind of cost assessment issues high-utilisation rate ICT services should consider when choosing between different infrastructure options. The research is co-funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme through the e-FISCAL project (contract number RI-283449)

Certifying Services in Cloud: The Case for a Hybrid, Incremental and Multi-layer Approach

The use of clouds raises significant security concerns for the services they provide. Addressing these concerns requires novel models of cloud service certification based on multiple forms of evidence including testing and monitoring data, and trusted computing proofs. CUMULUS is a novel infrastructure for realising such certification models