"Hey You? Get Off My Cloud": Evaluation of Cloud Service Models for Business Value within Pharma X

Recent reports note that managers need to operate at the intersection of business and current innovative technology. Most notably, "Strategy is not just informed by technology but powered by it". The opportunity to evaluate aspects of "cloud service models", as critical new systems, is therefore invaluable. Our research offers a pragmatic view of the characteristics of these technologies and a useful approach for identifying which may be most suitable in relation to the generation of business value. An example is provided of cloud service requirements within a multi-national pharmaceutical company (Pharma X) which is considered as a complex organizational context of significant interest. A highly qualitative methodological approach was adopted from personal interviews with a number of senior managers involved in new technology adoption. The extent of "benefits", "risks", "when to use" and "when not to use" were determined for a variety of common cloud service models to provide a schematic of important issues for evaluation and development. The research is insightful for large private sector multinational organisations which extends an analysis beyond the usual public sector studies. We conclude with lessons learned which demonstrate the most appropriate cloud enabled business models that support senior managers engaged in cloud service processes

Response time for cloud computing providers

Cloud services are becoming popular in terms of distributed technology because they allow cloud users to rent well-specified resources of computing, network, and storage infrastructure. Users pay for their use of services without needing to spend massive amounts for integration, maintenance, or management of the IT infrastructure. This creates the need for a reliable measurement methodology of the scalability for this type of new paradigm of services. In this paper, we develop performance metrics to measure and compare the scalability of the resources of virtualization on the cloud data centres. First, we discuss the need for a reliable method to compare the performance of cloud services among a number of various services being offered. Second, we develop a different type of metrics and propose a suitable methodology to measure the scalability using these types of metrics. We focus on the visualization resources such as CPU, storage disk, and network infrastructure. Finally, we compare well-known cloud providers using the proposed approach and conclude the recommendations. This type of research will help cloud consumers, before signing any official contract to use the desired services, to ascertain the ability and capacity of the cloud providers to deliver a particular service

Technical and Environmental Factors Affecting Cloud Computing Adoption in the South African Public Sector

Cloud computing can bring many benefits to organisations and countries. However there are technical and environmental factors that could hinder the adoption of these technologies in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of these factors in the public sector in developing countries such as South Africa. A detailed literature review revealed several factors to cloud computing adoption and these were empirically validated using a survey approach. Fifty one respondents from forty public sector organisations in South Africa completed the survey. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents showed concern regarding the availability and privacy of data. The environmental factors that were of the most importance to respondents were adoption strategies of cloud computing implementations as well as the provision of usage guidelines and regulatory requirements in organisations

Cloud Computing Adoption for E-Commerce in Developing Countries: Contributing Factors and Its Implication for Indonesia

This study examines literature in cloud computing adoption for e-commerce in developing countries. The goal is to investigate contributing factors affecting cloud computing adoption of e-commerce in developing countries, in particular its implication for Indonesia. Ten themes have been identified: business size and type, customer service improvement, security, economic value, infrastructure, business process improvement, cloud computing framework, regulatory framework, user acceptance, and stakeholders’ support. Among these ten themes, the infrastructure, security, stakeholders’ support, regulatory framework, user acceptance and business size/types themes are particularly relevant to Indonesia. The paper also presents efforts and projects that are currently in place, at the governmental level, that facilitates cloud computing adoption and e-commerce in Indonesia

Cloud service brokerage: a conceptual ontology-based service description framework

Cloud service brokerage has been identified as a key concern for future Cloud technology research and development. Integration, customization and aggregation are core functions of a Cloud service broker. The need to cater to horizontal and vertical integration in service description languages, horizontally between different providers and vertically across the different Cloud layers, has been well recognized. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual framework for a Cloud service broker in two parts: first, a reference architecture for Cloud service brokers; and second, a rich ontology-based template manipulation framework and operator calculus that describes the mediated and integrated Cloud services, facilitates manipulating their descriptions, and allows both horizontal and vertical dimensions to be covered. Structural aspects of that template will be identified, formalized in an ontology and aligned with the Cloud development and deployment process

SLA-based trust model for secure cloud computing

Cloud computing has changed the strategy used for providing distributed services to many business and government agents. Cloud computing delivers scalable and on-demand services to most users in different domains. However, this new technology has also created many challenges for service providers and customers, especially for those users who already own complicated legacy systems. This thesis discusses the challenges of, and proposes solutions to, the issues of dynamic pricing, management of service level agreements (SLA), performance measurement methods and trust management for cloud computing.In cloud computing, a dynamic pricing scheme is very important to allow cloud providers to estimate the price of cloud services. Moreover, the dynamic pricing scheme can be used by cloud providers to optimize the total cost of cloud data centres and correlate the price of the service with the revenue model of service. In the context of cloud computing, dynamic pricing methods from the perspective of cloud providers and cloud customers are missing from the existing literature. A dynamic pricing scheme for cloud computing must take into account all the requirements of building and operating cloud data centres. Furthermore, a cloud pricing scheme must consider issues of service level agreements with cloud customers.I propose a dynamic pricing methodology which provides adequate estimating methods for decision makers who want to calculate the benefits and assess the risks of using cloud technology. I analyse the results and evaluate the solutions produced by the proposed scheme. I conclude that my proposed scheme of dynamic pricing can be used to increase the total revenue of cloud service providers and help cloud customers to select cloud service providers with a good quality level of service.Regarding the concept of SLA, I provide an SLA definition in the context of cloud computing to achieve the aim of presenting a clearly structured SLA for cloud users and improving the means of establishing a trustworthy relationship between service provider and customer. In order to provide a reliable methodology for measuring the performance of cloud platforms, I develop performance metrics to measure and compare the scalability of the virtualization resources of cloud data centres. First, I discuss the need for a reliable method of comparing the performance of various cloud services currently being offered. Then, I develop a different type of metrics and propose a suitable methodology to measure the scalability using these metrics. I focus on virtualization resources such as CPU, storage disk, and network infrastructure.To solve the problem of evaluating the trustworthiness of cloud services, this thesis develops a model for each of the dimensions for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) using fuzzy-set theory. I use the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy-inference approach to develop an overall measure of trust value for the cloud providers. It is not easy to evaluate the cloud metrics for all types of cloud services. So, in this thesis, I use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as a main example when I collect the data and apply the fuzzy model to evaluate trust in terms of cloud computing. Tests and results are presented to evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed model

Παρουσίαση και Οικονομική Προσέγγιση της Τεχνολογίας Cloud Computing

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία έχει ως στόχο την παρουσίαση της νέας διαδικτυακής τεχνολογίας που ονομάζεται Cloud Computing (Υπολογιστικό Νέφος). Γίνεται μία αναφορά στα κέντρα δεδομένων (Data Centers) και τις παρεχόμενες υπηρεσίες, καθώς επίσης και στην εξέλιξή τους και στην παροχή υπηρεσιών cloud. Παρουσιάζονται οι διάφοροι τύποι εφαρμογών cloud, όπως και οι πάροχοι (Amazon, Google, Microsoft Azure) που πρωτοπόρησαν με τη διάθεση νέων υπηρεσιών. Παρουσιάζεται επίσης, η αγορά της συγκεκριμένης τεχνολογίας, οι τάσεις των εταιρειών καθώς και τα μερίδια αγοράς του κάθε παρόχου ανά τύπο υπηρεσίας (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Τέλος, αναφέρονται σε γενικές γραμμές κάποια μοντέλα εσόδων και κόστους, όπως επίσης και ένα case study που έχει ως στόχο τη σύγκριση επένδυσης σε κλασσικά data centers ή στην τεχνολογία Cloud Computing.This dissertation presents the new internet technology called Cloud Computing. Legacy Data Centers are also presented and the provided services as well as their development. The various types of cloud applications presented and the providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft Azure) that pioneered on the new services availability. Moreover the Cloud Computing market share is shown, the trends of the companies and the market share per service type (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS). There is also a reference on different revenue and cost models as well as a case study comparing the investment in classic data center or cloud computing technology

Analyzing Dynamic Capabilities in the Context of Cloud Platform Ecosystems - A Case Study Approach

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) refer to a firm’s abilities to continuously adapt its resource base in order to respond to changes in its external environment. The capability to change dynamically is crucial in business ecosystems that are composed of a variety of actors. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leader in the cloud platform industry, is a promising cloud platform provider (CPP) to show a high degree of dynamic capability fulfillment within its highly fluctuating ecosystem. To date, the full scope of dynamic capabilities in cloud platform ecosystems (CPEs) has not been fully understood. Previous work has failed to deliver a combined perspective of explicit dynamic capabilities in cloud platform ecosystems applied on an in-depth practical case. With our mixed-method case study on the AWS ecosystem we deliver a thorough understanding of its sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities. We generate a set of strategy management frameworks that support our expectations, lead to unexpected insights and answer the questions of what, how, why and with whom AWS uses DCs. In detail, we provide an understanding about DC chronological change, DC network patterns and DC logical explanations. Our research is based on a self-compiled case study database containing 16k+ secondary data pages from interviews, blogs, announcements, case studies, job vacancies, etc. that we analyze qualitatively and quantitatively. We find out that AWS develops and holds a large set of interacting dynamic capabilities incorporating a variety of ecosystem actors in order to sustain tremendous customer value and satisfaction. The thesis infers significant theoretical and practical implications for all CPE actors, like partners, customers, investors and researchers in the field of IT strategy management. Managers of all CPE actors are encouraged to critically evaluate their own maturity level and complement a CPP’s DC explications in order to boost business by implementing sensing, seizing, transforming and innovating capabilities. Keywords: Dynamic Capabilities, Cloud Platform Ecosystems, Innovation Capabilities, Mixed-Methods Case Study, Amazon Web Service

Financial aspects of cloud computing business models

The purpose of the study was to explore financial aspects of cloud computing business models from information technology (IT) services provider’s perspective. The financial aspects were divided into revenue model and related pricing mechanisms and cost structure and related cost accounting mechanisms according to business model ontology. Cloud computing is a new computing paradigm and the latest megatrend in IT industry developed as a result of the convergence of numerous new and existing technologies. It is characterized by provision of rapidly scalable and measurable IT capabilities as a service on on-demand and self-service basis over the network from common resource pool. The study was carried out as a single case study in a global company offering IT services for large enterprises and public organizations and currently preparing to introduce its own cloud services. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers of the case company for exploring the financial aspects of cloud services. Qualitative data analysis was employed for processing and summarizing the findings. Findings of the study suggested that each cloud service should have a distinct business model. The business model is a mediating construct that translates the new technology to the service’s value proposition. The business model also defines appropriate pricing and cost accounting mechanism for a service. The business models are based on services provider’s position in cloud computing value chain. A cloud computing business logic framework was created to illustrate the interaction between the value chain, business models and its elements. The key cost types of services do not necessarily change much with cloud computing. Cloud computing has still potential to significantly reduce services provider’s costs through reengineering of production architecture. A cloud computing cost accounting model was created to illustrate how production costs should be aggregated and distributed. Pricing of services changes with cloud computing and pay per use and subscription-based pricing mechanisms are most typical for cloud services. The pricing should be based on customer’s perceived value instead of production costs of services. A generic cloud computing pricing mechanism that combines pay per use and subscription mechanisms was created to better balance risk sharing between services provider and customer. The main contributions of the study were the establishment of services provider focus in cloud computing literature and discussion of financial aspects of cloud computing