Factors Influencing the Adoption of Enterprise Cloud Computing

Despite the promising application of cloud computing within government organisations, determining the barriers to the successful implementation of cloud computing remains a major challenge. Often, government organisations face formidable barriers to fully adopting cloud computing functions. These barriers include organisational culture issues, a weak application of service-level agreements (SLAs), compliance issues, interoperability and integration issues, the lack of an organisational strategy, cost calculation methods, cloud service availability, and cloud data security and privacy, as well as insufficient trust in providers. Tackling these barriers while meeting the specifications of government cloud computing involves architectural requirements and mechanisms. In addition, the nature of cloud ecosystem operation and its alignment with appropriate strategies are known to be complex, also considering the growing desire for governance solutions. Although researchers and organisations have recognised cloud computing obstacles prior to the cloud implementation stage, fewer efforts have been made to investigate cloud barriers in-depth during and after cloud implementation projects or when introducing governance solutions. This might partly be attributable to inadequate enterprise requirements for addressing cloud barriers, the complexity of government cloud specifications, and the lack of involvement by cloud stakeholders, such as providers and consumers. Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to develop a governance method consisting of the generation and testing of architectural requirements to overcome dominant cloud barriers and improve cloud computing functionalities in the implementation stage. To achieve this, the roles of related cloud providers and consumers have been investigated. The study was guided by activities of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Architecture Development Method (ADM) to design related architectural requirements that would provide best practices for the development of the governance method. Using a sequential, exploratory mixed method, multiple qualitative case studies on the role of cloud providers were conducted to explore which and how architectural requirements are suitable and applicable for addressing the identified cloud barriers. Afterwards, a quantitative survey study was performed to examine and validate the findings from the qualitative phase and to discover the role of cloud consumers in tackling cloud barriers. The utilisation of dual perspectives, from cloud providers and consumers, to design and measure the suitability and applicability of the architectural requirements is a substantial theoretical contribution in the field of enterprise information systems and cloud governance. Both cloud providers and consumers in the selected research context balanced their roles in the composition of cloud ecosystem projects, reducing complexity and enabling cooperative solutions for handling cloud barriers with different levels of emphasis and prioritisation. The results of this thesis provide significant guidance in eliciting architectural requirements as well as in their successful contribution to addressing the 10 identified cloud barriers in the selected context. Seeking a cloud provider’s perspective through multiple case studies resulted in 24 confirmed, newly emerged architectural requirements and 48 sub-requirements for best practices to support Information Technology (IT) managers and practitioners during the implementation of government cloud projects. From the point of view of the cloud service consumer, statistical evidence showed that the architectural requirements proved to be relevant and applicable and resulted in the validation of only eight important cloud constructs with a scale of 36 architectural requirements. The results at the governance level also produced a clear method that can enhance the realisation of value when business/IT strategies and EA governance practices both take place in cloud projects. The governance method also consists of a set of architectural requirements to support managing and controlling cloud computing implementation projects with related stakeholders and change management initiatives. The architectural requirements have been modelled via the ArchiMate 3.0 modelling language as unique and beneficial contributions for the enhancement of enterprise architecture practices. This thesis thereby introduces a novel cloud governance method with clear mechanisms and practices to serve as crucial resources for related organisations, decision-makers, business practitioners and researchers.

Over the past years, Thai small and medium enterprises (SME) had to deal with changing economic situations and had to adapt to new technological evolutions, representing new challenges as well as new opportunities for doing business. With the forthcoming ASEAN Economic Community 2015, Thai SMEs will face an increase in competition and, as a possible solution, may have to adopt new information systems to remain competitive. The objectives of this study are (1) to identify the factors facilitating or hindering the adoption of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems by Thai SMEs and to (2) provide an analysis of the adoption and the implementation strategies. The research is based on a qualitative exploratory approach, relying on semistructured interviews with IT experts, IT managers and business owners to collect data, and on the template analysis method to analyze the data. Respondents have identified trust, cost control and the security of financial data as the most important factors for the adoption and selection of on-premise and cloud-based ERP systems. The adoption rate of cloud-based solutions appears to be low and local ERP providers face the challenge to discover the reasons why business owners do not adopt their solutions. First generation business owners prepare the transition to the next generation and want to better organize and structure how their businesses operates, but their own confidence in the technology still limit the adoption pace and the decision process. SMEs' strategies usually consist in a step-by-step implementation, consolidating the changes and readjusting the goals in case of setbacks, minimizing the consequences. ERP providers' strategies focus on new offerings with enhanced features and slowly integrate change management and extended support. Keywords: ERP, Cloud Computing, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), Mobile App, Open Source, Organizational Innovation Adoption model.

Cloud Computing (CC) is a paradigm shift with the potential of transforming the information and communication technology (ICT) industry. ICT is an integral part of all businesses, and CC helps in lightening the burden of massive ICT investments. Thus, it is essential to understand the factors that influence CC adoption. The purpose of this study is to identify and rank critical factors for CC adoption in the Indian context. The research has adopted mixed methodology (qualitative and quantitative). Experts from 13 organizations (including 8 cloud service providers (CSPs) and 5 cloud service users (CSUs)) are interviewed. Content analysis is used to confirm existing factors and identify new factors in the Indian context. Qualitative analysis has identified four new factors, namely, ‘time to market’, ‘futuristic’, ‘resistance to change’ and ‘financial losses’ (arising from security and resource availability). The quantitative part of the research used analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) techniques to rank the factors. The analysis revealed ‘IT service cost’ and ‘time to market’ as the most critical factor through FAHP and AHP respectively. However, ‘organization size’ is reported the least critical for CC adoption through both the methods. The results also highlight divergence among the criticality of CC adoption factors using the two techniques. The study is very useful for CSPs and key decision-makers to understand the critical adoption factors and judiciously strategize for CC service promotions. It will also help users to wisely decide while making CC adoption decision.

The concept of the digital divide is becoming more and more complex as access to computers and the use of computers, changes over time. When the existence of a “digital divide” first emerged, it revolved around access to computers and related technologies. The high cost of computers and related technologies creates a large divide between people who could afford them, and who had access to all the advantages of Information technology in general, and those who could not. ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) have become an indispensable tool for businesses. Competitiveness and productivity depend on them. Cloud Computing has also generated new business opportunities for companies that have understood the key to this new social and commercial space. Cloud Computing on education can bridge the knowledge divide, the resource divide and the digital divide, teachers could be empowered under the cloud warning. It can be on devices, notebook, e-book and cell-phone. Cloud Computing in order to reduce digital divide has come as a friendly way to provide computer applications to users without the need for those users to purchase, install or support software on their local computers and/or servers. This research will cover the facts and issues discovered into the Digital Divide, after exploring details and points of views from experts. Also, this research will provide two models and one framework to describe, explain and finally reduce the gap or as most of the researchers has been looking for building a bridge in order to reduce the digital divide. Since computers and, later, the Internet became popular and came to our business, there has been a different degree of acceptance thereof by the people. The variety of profiles ranging from the 'early adopter', that is one that is to last forever in this new technology, to the 'allergic' to the computer, because they do not know how to use password to login and/or prefers to work as they always have done. Is not the first time we hear about people who cannot make simples actions in a computer because their capabilities are very low. I'm talking about everyday situations, rather than more complex ones such as maintenance of machinery. This research will treat the Cloud Computing concept as a tool to Reduce Digital Divide; the digital divide will be related to issues of educational access to the benefits of digitalization and the capabilities of a group of students in three different high school centers to use ICT appropriately and contribute to sustainable development.

The century we are living in is the age of technology and innovations. Without getting compatible with such techniques, a business finds itself hard to survive, so to remain competitive in the industry and reap unique benefits, one must not hesitate to use modern technology in processing of its business operations. As a business understands the language of accounting, making it mandatory for every company to have a comprehensive understanding of its technical aspects to reap the benefits of today’s market. Accounting is an information system as s part of the significant management information system provides the organisation with information on various aspects. Cloud Accounting allows accounting managers to access financial information from anyplace in the world round the clock leading to no geographical and infrastructural boundaries. This paper focuses on comprehending the term cloud computing, current scenario and prospect in cloud computing, and will likewise make comparative analyses between conventional accounting and cloud accounting. Keywords: Cloud computing, Accounting, Software as a service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, On-Premises, Hosted solutions. Cite this Article Ashwani Kumar, Himanshu Kushwaha. A Study of Cloud Computing with Special Reference to Cloud-Based Accounting. E - Commerce for Future & Trends . 2018; 5(3): 15–24p.

Cloud services are viewed as a new paradigm of computing provision shifting to the network in the form of services. More and more firms are planning to adopt cloud services recently. Thus, understanding drivers and barriers of cloud adoption from firms’ point of view becomes very important. Though many qualitative studies have already addressed the adoption factors of cloud services, none of previous research has empirically examined these antecedents using large scale of data. Furthermore, a complete and integrated framework which can help firms evaluate whether they should step into cloud is lacked in the current literature. To bridge this gap, our study uses technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework and IT governance to develop a cloud service adoption model. Using telephone survey, we collected 200 public Taiwanese firms to empirically examine our proposed model. Our results show that cloud adoption is still at its initial stage (IaaS adoption rate=13%; PaaS adoption rate=5%; SaaS adoption rate=30%) and only factors in the technology context within the TOE framework would significantly influence cloud services adoption. The interesting finding is quite different from previous innovation diffusion studies which focus on mature stage of innovation diffusion. Our study affirms that in the early stage of innovation (cloud) adoption, historically important factors in organization and environment contexts have very limited impacts. We explain the phenomenon using the viewpoint of innovation diffusion curve: the current cloud adopters are innovators whose characteristics are adventurous, daring to attempt new things, and leading the crowd. These pioneers love to embrace just launched technologies, and are not easily affected by other people. Instead, they will affect general public later. As a result, we suggest cloud service providers focus more on promoting the benefits and alleviating the concerns of cloud services when marketing their cloud services at early stage.

Energy Conservation Strategy Research for Residential Building Refurbishment in Urban area of China

Cloud computing is next generation of Internet technology and data centers. As such, Information security (IS) has become one of the most essential issues of data center security on the cloud computing, but we cannot rely solely on single solution to support all of the necessary features of IS. Therefore, we need to a new information security service model, called Security Operation Center (SOC). It can support online interactions and remote monitoring via network operations in data centers. The SOC is required to integrate related IS technologies based on security policies. In this paper, we propose the service level agreement (SLA) strategy for designing the SOC platform to meet the IS requirements of any organization in cloud computing. Therefore, the main purposes of this paper are to propose the framework of SLA strategy and the integration technology for designing an SOC platform. The SOC platform with SLA is to handle and supervise all the security service processes under different levels of cloud security enforcements according to data center scales, business properties, and existing IS functions. Consequently, the SLA strategy and integrating technology of IS can be the reference model for designing a proposed SOC platform in data centers on the cloud computing.

The convergence of mobile computing and cloud computing enables new mobile applications that are both resource-intensive and interactive. For these applications, end-to-end network bandwidth and latency matter greatly when cloud resources are used to augment the computational power and battery life of a mobile device. This dissertation designs and implements a new architectural element called a cloudlet, that arises from the convergence of mobile computing and cloud computing. Cloudlets represent the middle tier of a 3-tier hierarchy, mobile device — cloudlet—cloud, to achieve the right balance between cloud consolidation and network responsiveness. We first present quantitative evidence that shows cloud location can affect the performance of mobile applications and cloud consolidation. We then describe an architectural solution using cloudlets that are a seamless extension of todays cloud computing infrastructure. Finally, we define minimal functionalities that cloudlets must offer above/beyond standard cloud computing, and address corresponding technical challenges.

During the early years of their establishment, information service providers (ISPs) were viewed simply as 'suppliers of information'. Nowadays, however, the commercialization of the Internet coupled with the progressive advancements in information technology (IT) have seen the business paradigm evolve into so-called electronic commerce (EC), with the result of an ever-increasing demand from enterprises for new types of information services (IS) to facilitate and coordinate their daily operations. Now, as the role of the ISP is continually changing, and the content of IS becomes ever broader, an effective means of the assessment of ISPs has become a critical issue in any enterprise's decision on the eventual selection of a competent ISP. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to establish a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework for assessing and evaluating ISPs. Through a review of the literature of previous works on relevant topics, this paper begins by proposing a hierarchy structure for the problems involved in ISP assessment. Based on the hierarchy structure, both additive (analytic hierarchy process) and non-additive (fuzzy measure and fuzzy integral) MCDM methods are used in this study to show the relative importance of the selection criteria and the dimensions of those criteria. Ten real cases are then employed as illustrative alternatives to demonstrate the synthesis decisions under the application of both MCDM methods, so as to show the applicability of the framework. Finally, we find that there is a distinction between the results of alternative rankings produced by the two MCDM methods, thus the ten alternatives are categorized into four groups.

Cloud computing is a hot technology now, is a new business model. The use of cloud computing to businesses in many industries, especially e-commerce has brought new opportunities, However, due to the characteristics of its own cloud computing and the Internet network security flaws, Resulting in e-commerce system security weaknesses. This paper describes the cloud computing and security issues of cloud computing in the e-commerce, Through e-commerce security needs analysis, Proposed ensuring e-commerce security methods in the cloud.

In spite of many advantages of cloud computing, security concerns are a barrier in users' adopting the cloud service. In this paper, we evaluate relative priorities between security attributes of ISO 7498-2 standards affecting overall security quality in cloud computing. For an objective evaluation, the fuzzy AHP(Analytic hierarchical process) is applied. The evaluation results represented the relative priority with concrete number can be an effective management method to choose and develop the cloud computing service.

Cloud computing offers cost effective services on-demand which encourage critical infrastructure providers to consider migrating to the cloud. Critical infrastructures are considered as a backbone of modern societies such as power plants and water. Information in cloud computing is likely to be shared among different entities, which could have various degrees of sensitivity. This requires robust isolation and access control mechanisms. Although various access control models and policies have been developed, they cannot fulfil requirements for a cloud based access control system. The reason is that cloud computing has a diverse sets of security requirements and unique security challenges such as multi-tenant and heterogeneity of security policies, rules and domains. This thesis provides a detailed study of cloud computing security challenges and threats, which were used to identify security requirements for various critical infrastructure providers. We found that an access control system is a crucial security requirement for the surveyed critical infrastructure providers. Furthermore, the requirement analysis was used to propose a new criteria to evaluate access control systems for cloud computing. Moreover, this work presents a new cloud based access control model to meet the identified cloud access control requirements. The model does not only ensure the secure sharing of resources among potential untrusted tenants, but also has the capacity to support different access permissions for the same cloud user. Our focused in the proposed model is the lack of data isolation in lower levels (CPU caches), which could lead to bypass access control models to gain some sensitive information by using cache side-channel attacks. Therefore, the thesis investigates various real attack scenarios and the gaps in existing mitigation approaches. It presents a new Prime and Probe cache side-channel attack, which can give detailed information about addresses accessed by a virtual machine with no need for any information about cache sets accessed by the virtual machine. The design, implementation and evaluation of a proposed solution preventing cache side-channel attacks are also presented in the thesis. It is a new lightweight solution, which introduces very low overhead (less than 15,000 CPU cycles). It can be applied in any operating system and prevents cache side-channel attacks in cloud computing. The thesis also presents a new detecting cache side-channel attacks solution. It focuses on the infrastructure used to host cloud computing tenants by counting cache misses caused by a virtual machine. The detection solutions has 0% false negative and 15% false positive.

Cloud computing is a new information technology paradigm, one which has been adopted in many different sectors. Many developing countries are working on improving e-government to provide services to their citizens that are integrated and effective. Therefore, the Saudi government has made improving e-government a high priority. The aim of this study is to explore significant factors affecting the adoption of cloud computing in e-government services in Saudi Arabia as a case study. After identifying these factors, we propose a new comprehensive model for the Adoption of Cloud Computing in Saudi G-GOVernment (ACCE-GOV) that has been adopted from the Technology Organisation Environment (TOE) framework and the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory. This research model examines factors of technological context (compatibility, complexity, service quality, security, and relative advantages), organisational context (top management support, organisation size, and technology readiness), environmental context (regulations and competitive pressures), and social context (awareness, trust, and attitude) in regard to the adoption of cloud computing. Ultimately, this study enhances the decision-making of the Saudi government through understanding and highlighting the most important factors that influence the adoption of cloud computing in an e-government context. This is a position paper, reporting on the work in progress. The findings of this study will be useful for the researchers who considers suitability of different methodological approaches for cloud computing adoption and evaluation.

Cloud computing has different meaning to different people, the privacy and security issues also differ between a consumer using a public cloud application, a medium-sized Company using a customized Design of business on a cloud platform, and Some Companies are using Platform on Public level which are Public to Public Network The security requirements in cloud computing environment is to find the Security threats in the Structure of clouds To find the security solutions, and finding basis so that Pre Security Step Should be taken in concerned with security future model. In this paper is to build a trusted computing environment for cloud computing system by Combining the trusted computing platform into cloud computing system Which is free from attacks and threats and system is designed with a model system in which cloud computing system is combined with trusted computing platform and trusted platform models. Keywords: cloud computing, data breaches, Api Attack Deniel Attack, Account high Jacking, Deniel of Services