A Cloud Decision making Frameworkfor SMEs

Author Andy Marshall

Submitted as part of the requirements for the degree

of MSc in Cloud Computing

at the School of Computing,

National College of Ireland

Dublin, Ireland.

July 2016

Supervisor Victor del Rosal

Abstract

Cloud computing adoption continues to grow at a significant rate attracting a large base

of different organisation types. However, a lack of understanding in the decision-making

criteria required to adopt cloud computing successfully is lacking.

Cloud computing is a topic within the SME sector that creates significant uncertainty

and confusion regarding the benefits pertaining to adoption and the delivery of IT

services. For SMEs the biggest question IT decision makers need to answer is How do

we know if cloud is the right delivery model for us?

Today, there is no framework or model available to derive the answer to this question

for SMEs. To answer this question, IT decisions makers must understand the benefits,

challenges and implications across criteria such as cost, quality of service, organisational

readiness, impact on resource utilisation, service availability, vendor lock-in, compati-

bility and security before drawing a conclusion.

Research does exist outlining the supposed reasons for adopting cloud computing within

SMEs and large enterprises but little or no research exists specifically focused on the

strategic assessment of cloud computing when evaluated against existing on premise

solutions. This a challenge for virtually all organisations currently availing of on premise

IT services today.

A reasonable amount of research pertaining to cloud computing adoption across SMEs

has been published. Irrespective of size or activity sector, whether a start up or provider

of traditional services with the capability and offerings provided by cloud capabilities

SMEs have the ability to expand their business. Cloud computing offers SMEs access

to IT services that previously only large enterprise organisations could have afforded,

the ’Digital’ economy being a good example of this. It is a belief of the author that

no business can survive without embracing technology in some capacity. SMEs often

resist the opportunity to deploy new technology because they have limited resources

available to either deploy or manage these services.

ii

The focus of this research is to develop a cloud computing decision making framework

for SMEs in order to drive the decision-making rationale for cloud computing adoption.

This will enable IT decision makers within SMEs to determine if IT services should be

delivered through cloud computing rather than on premise.

Keywords: Strategic, Sourcing, Cloud, Decision making, Outsourcing, Model

iii

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Victor del Rosal for his

support and guidance in writing this Thesis. Victor was a pleasure to work with and

his guidance and support made the overall experience extremely enjoyable.

I would also like to thank my colleague Noel Ginty for pointing me in the right direction,

technical guidance and support with developing the on-line framework itself.

Finally, without the support of my amazing wife Emma, it simply would not have been

possible to complete my Masters, thank you so much!

iv

Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iv

1 Introduction 1

2 Background 5

2.1 SMEs and Technology adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2 Transformation of IT Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.3 Cloud computing in SME’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.4 Cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.5 Recent Survey: Cloud First for Corporates and Chief Nation . . . . . . 9

2.6 Challenges, Concerns and Barriers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.6.1 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.6.2 Internet Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.6.3 Cloud Service Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6.4 Compliance and Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6.5 Lack of Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6.6 Compatability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6.7 Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.6.8 Vendor Lock-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.7 Outsourcing and Cloud adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.7.1 Traditional provisioning of IT Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.7.2 Evolution from outsourcing to Cloud computing . . . . . . . . . 16

2.8 Cost Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.9 Organisational context and senior management support influence . . . . 17

2.10 Company Size and Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.11 Technology Readiness and Utilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.12 Vendor Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.13 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

v

3 Specification 21

3.1 Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4 Design 23

4.1 Cloud Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.2 Current On-Premise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.3 Design of the Cloud Decision Making Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3.1 Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3.2 Establish criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3.3 Confirm requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.3.4 Build CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.3.5 Apply CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.4 Modules and Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.5.1 Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5 Implementation 34

5.1 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

5.2 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

5.3 Designing the Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5.4 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5.4.1 Visual Studio 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.4.2 Azure Web App services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.4.3 SQL Server express . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

6 Evaluation 40

6.1 Organisational Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

7 Conclusions 49

7.1 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

A Interview data 59

B Cloud decision making Framework development 69

C The published Cloud Framework 72

D Sample Excel Models 75

E ASP.NET web app to Azure App Service using Visual Studio 76

E.1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

vi

F Creating the SQL database and setting up Firewall rules on the Azure

portal 84

F.1 Create a new Azure SQL server-level firewall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

G Completed framework analysis 89

vii

List of Figures

1.1 Oppertunity: business moving to the cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.2 Cloud computing infrastructure and platform Market . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.1 Where is your organisation in terms of cloud deployment? (Auxilion,

2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.2 What was your main driver for moving to the cloud? (Auxilion, 2015) . 10

2.3 Has Cloud reduced your capital expenditure? (Auxilion, 2015) . . . . . 11

2.4 CSA cloud security threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1 AWS architecture framework Amazon (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.1 CDMF workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.2 Quantative attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.3 Qualative attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.4 CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.5 Office365 comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.6 Azure cloud calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4.7 TCO template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.1 Creating a web app and project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

6.1 CDMF of benefit? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

6.2 Completed frameworks by country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

6.3 Cloud direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

6.4 Cloud services under consideration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

6.5 Opex and capex options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

6.6 Cloud provider control handover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

6.7 Come across other similar frameworks? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

6.8 Cloud recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

B.1 Different itterations of CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

B.2 Sample 1 extract from CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

viii

B.3 Sample 2 extract from CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

B.4 Sample 3 extract from CDMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

C.1 CDMF Welcome page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

C.2 CDMF registration page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

C.3 CDMF post registration and instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

C.4 CDMF output and score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

E.1 Creating a web app and project in Azure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

E.2 Cloudframework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

E.3 Selecting a Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

E.4 Change Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

E.5 Hosted in the Cloud and app services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

E.6 Service plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

E.7 Web Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

E.8 Publish App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

E.9 Publish Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

E.10 App preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

E.11 Overall status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

E.12 Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

F.1 New SQL database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

F.2 SQL setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

F.3 Creating CDMF database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

F.4 Deployement started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

F.5 SQL Firewall setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

F.6 SQL Firewall settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

G.1 CDMF variable scoring - count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

G.2 CDMF variable scoring - percentage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

ix

List of Tables

2.1 Cloud computing characteristics and models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4.1 TCO acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

x

Chapter 1

Introduction

Mell and Grance (2011) refer to the characteristics of cloud computing as on-demand

scalability of highly available and reliable pooled computing resources, secure access

to metered services from nearly anywhere, and displacement of data and services from

inside to outside the organization. As SME organisations evolve, particularly within

the digital economy, the characteristics mentioned above are becoming increasingly

essential for SMEs. Given this fact, a unique opportunity exists to research existing

materials associated with cloud computing adoption decision making as part of this

research and then apply the knowledge obtained towards the development of a cloud

decision making framework for SMEs.

It is easy to assume that Enterprise organisations are at the centre of the global econ-

omy; however, this is an erroneous perception as a majority of people think that it is

SMEs that are at the centre of the global economy (European, 2008).

Bridge and O’Neill (2012) outline the level of importance of the SME sector to

economies and that the support of local governments is crucial to enable the continued

growth and development of SMEs. The significance of SMEs extends and reaches far

wider than just a country’s economic health or its employment status. SMEs play a

core role in enhancing the social, economic and political health of a country and they

have a fundamentally different relationship with these attributes compared to large

enterprises (Curran and Blackburn, 2000).

Cloud computing offers SMEs an alternative option that they can employ to deliver

IT services rather than depending on the traditional on-premise approach. Although

the concept of cloud computing has been around for many years, it is a relatively new

delivery model for the SME industry to profit from. The ultimate objective of cloud

computing is to deliver business success.

1

Hypothesis: Should small to medium sized businesses take advantage of

cloud computing to deliver IT services?

This research will attempt to provide an answer to the research question:

“Cloud computing adoption in small to medium sized enteprises: Is cloud

computing better than on-premise technology for the delivery of IT ser-

vices?”

In the context of Ireland, the success of SMEs and in turn the wider economy is directly

linked to the relationship between SMEs and the adoption of new technologies. This

view can also be extended to the European economy as well as on a global basis.

Furthermore, the formulation of the framework and association of certain variables

linked to the success of cloud computing adoption will contribute new understanding for

those researching or evaluating it. The lessons identified from this particular research

coupled with the theoretical underpinnings, will enhance the researchers knowledge in

this area. Hadidi (2010) states that previous publications in the cloud computing field

have focused primarily on technical aspects. The contribution of the overall research

in this area linked with this framework will provide a contribution to address the

shortcomings with regards to cloud computing research (Vaezi, 2012).

According to del Rosal (2015), the following benefits can be delivered through cloud

computing, 1) increased operational efficiency 2) scalability 3) grater speed of deploy-

ment 4) increased productivity and 5) improved financial performance. Figure 1.1

shows the block diagram of the mentioned outline.

There is such a vast quantity of available research relating to cloud computing usage and

adoption available. To date, most of this research is focused on cloud computing usage

once it has undergone implementation. It does not focus on the strategic assessment to

determine if cloud computing is indeed the correct model for organisations to leverage

in order to maximise its capabilities and opportunities presented by the model. A cloud

decision making framework is required to ensure that strategically SMEs strategically

evolve into more competitive, dynamic and leaner organisations.

Smith D (2015) postulates that cloud computing is an integral part of IT; however,

hype and multiple options continue to confuse IT leaders. The statement supports the

belief that no clear decision making model exists in order to simplify the comparison

of cloud computing over on-premise.

Initial cloud computing studies have focused on topics such as the emergence of and

developments within cloud computing (Su, 2011), strategies for migrating to cloud

2

Figure 1.1: Oppertunity: business moving to the cloud

computing environments (Conway and Curry, 2012; Iyer and Henderson, 2010), and of

particular interest to this research; the benefits and challenges in moving to cloud com-

puting by Armbrust et al. (2010) and Conway (2011). However, these studies though

have focused primarily on large enterprise organisations. Furthermore, as argued by

Doherty et al. (2015) significant research regarding the adoption of cloud computing

in the SME sector has previously been completed but not for specific industries in the

knowledge intensive, niche. Doherty et al. (2015) proposes that the earlier research

would be well complemented by new additional research focusing on industries that

are in knowledge intensive business areas. Given the expected rate of increase in cloud

computing, an opportunity exists to create a decision making framework that allows

SMEs to understand clearly if IT services should be operated from cloud computing

platforms. A report from Columbus (2015), suggests that the expected annual spend

on cloud computing could reach forty three billion (dollars) by 2018. Figure 1.2 shows

the statistics of the cloud computing infrastructure and platform market.

A further report from IDC (2014) highlights that the spending on Public IT cloud

services may reach 127 billion (dollars) in 2018. This represents a five-year compound

annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent. This would be approximately six times

the rate of growth for the overall IT market. In 2018, public IT cloud services will

account for more than half of the software, server, and storage spending growth in the

world.

3

Figure 1.2: Cloud computing infrastructure and platform Market

In 2008, the EU’s Small Business Act was introduced to implement a range of pro-

enterprise initiatives to assist SMEs (Borbas et al., 2009). The overall concept of this

Act was to encourage the adoption and utilisation of information and communication

technologies by SMEs. As a result, it was expected that this would lead to improved

competitiveness in the market and that SMEs were best placed to capitalise since they

are seen as being more agile and dynamic than large enterprises. In addition, especially

for the SMEs that are located in Ireland, they appear to be positioned extremely well

given the direct local access to technology leaders, OEMs, researchers and government

support that they can enjoy. However, this does not necessarily lead to automatic

adoption, particularly in regard to cloud computing. SMEs that would like to adopt

cloud computing are today faced with substantial volumes of information and multiple

products that on surface appear to be the same. Furthermore, they are faced with tech-

nology selection dilemmas, alignment to business strategy challenges and a challenge

in truly understanding if cloud computing is the right choice for their business.

An opportunity may also exist to develop the framework in a commercial sense as

the available research chas indicated that customers and channel partners do not have

access to such a service.

In addition, the AWS Well-Architected Framework Amazon (2015) refers to a set of

general design principles when considering cloud options. These principles entail the

following: 1) stop guessing capacity needs 2) test systems at production scale 3) lower

the risk of architecture change 4) automate to make experimentation easier 5) allow

for evolutionary architectures.

4

Chapter 2

Background

2.1 SMEs and Technology adoption

An SME is a small or medium sized enterprise that typically employs less than 250

people or has a turnover of less than 50 million euros per year (Street and Meister,

2004). In Ireland, as an example, it is estimated that there are in excess of 250,000

SMEs providing over half of the total population with employment. SME’s form a

cornerstone of the European Union (EU) economy, representing 99 per cent of all en-

terprises (European, 2008). Given the instrumental role played by SMEs in contributing

to socio-economic development (Sin Tan et al., 2010), ensuring that they fathom the

multitude of benefits and opportunities offered by cloud computing to the organisation

is imperative (Aljabre, 2012).

Amazon (2015) explains that in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT

infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services that are now commonly

referred to as cloud computing. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the

opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs

that scale with businesses. With the cloud service, businesses no longer need to plan for

and procure servers and other IT infrastructure in earnest. Instead, they can instantly

spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results much more

efficiently according to Amazon (2015). Cloud-based computing introduces a radical

shift in how technology is obtained, used and managed, in addition to how organisations

budget and pay for its services.

According to Riemenschneider et al. (2003), SMEs are understudied as well as unique

when trying to understand them from an IT perspective. As an additional note, the

benefits articulated throughout this research paper can also apply to enterprises as

5

well as SMEs. However, for the purposes of this research, the researcher has amassed

literature focusing on benefits and challenges associated with Cloud adoption with

emphasis on the SME sector.

It has been suggested by Sarkar and Young (2011) that cloud computing offers great

benefits including cost reduction, improved performance and availability of services.

Owing to this fact, a better explanation needs to be offered as to why the adoption or

transition to cloud has been so slow to date. “With the perceived dramatic reduction

of in-house IT infrastructure, organizations have been promised by supplier’s dramatic

cost savings and reduced administrative obstacles, resulting in an attractive outsourcing

proposition for non-IT enterprises” (Sarkar and Young, 2011).

As cloud computing is a relatively new IT and business phenomenon, there remains

many untapped areas of research in this field (Son et al., 2011). Initial studies by

Conway (2011) and Loebbecke et al. (2012) have focused on big corporations, with

little attention paid to the SME sector. SMEs are defined by the European Commission

(2005) and (Street and Meister, 2004) as any firm with less than 250 employees and

are recognized as being inherently different from the large organization.

In a survey of over 3,000 SMEs undertaken by Microsoft (BCSG, 2015), almost 40

per cent of respondents indicated that they expect to pay for some cloud services

within the next three years. This was found to be an increase of almost a third since

2010. The survey also found that the number of cloud services that SMEs would pay

for will increase almost two fold within the next three-year period. This notion is

further supported by the findings of a European Commission study, which highlighted

the importance of technology and stipulated the increasing need for SMEs to have

“objective and understandable information about cloud computing” (European, 2008).

2.2 Transformation of IT Services

Supposedly, traditional in-house IT service models have been dramatically impacted

with the perceived increase in the adoption of cloud computing. The primary objective

of cloud computing is to reduce costs and to minimise processing time associated with

IT services, while at the same time improving and enhancing reliability, processing

throughput, flexibility and availability (Dwivedi and Mustafee, 2010; Choudhary and

Vithayathil, 2013; Oliveira et al., 2014). The standard cloud computing model promotes

flexibility and is composed of five essential characteristics, four service models and four

deployment models (Sultan, 2011; Mell and Grance, 2011; Lin and Chen, 2012; Brender

and Markov, 2013) as summarised in Table 2.1.

6

Table 2.1: Cloud computing characteristics and models

Essential Characteristics Service Models Deployment Models

On-demand self service Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) Private CloudBroad network access Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Community Cloud

Resource pooling Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Public CloudRapid elasticity Hybrid Cloud

Measured service

Cloud computing, according to (Mell and Grance, 2011) is a model for enabling ubiqui-

tous, convenient and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable com-

puting resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). Cloud

computing can be quickly deployed and released with very little management effort or

service provider interaction. Cloud computing is composed of five essential characteris-

tics, three service models, and four deployment models. Since its emergence in 2006, it

has become one of the key technologies considered for implementation by organizations

worldwide (Canatara, 2015). Babcock (2010) refers to cloud computing as the out-

sourcing of IT resources. The idea of cloud computing is not new. Cloud computing

as is known today incorporates existing technologies such as centralized, distributed

and utility computing and the concept of virtualization (Gong et al., 2010). The value

of this concept according to (Weiss, 2007) is the combination of these technologies on

to a network platform. Cloud computing facilitates improved device independence,

portability, and collaboration opportunities. Regardless of location, employees can be

more flexible (Zhang et al., 2010) by accessing information and sharing it in real time

through devices such as laptops, smart phones and tablets. This phenomenon nurtur-

ers the growing generation of remote workers who travel frequently as well as project

teams that are spread across geographical locations (Aljabre, 2012).

2.3 Cloud computing in SME’s

Whilst the adoption of cloud computing has been drastic over the last number of

years, most SME organisations are still testing and evaluating the model. The reasons

for this slow uptake needs to be examined in greater detail. It is the belief of the

author that no concise framework that fully incorporates technology, business and socio

economic factors exists today. This impacts the strategic assessment and adoption of

cloud computing services when compared with traditional on-premise delivery models.

To date, most organisations have chosen a soft or tentative first step towards cloud

computing, particularly for the delivery of business critical IT services (Mircea and

Andreescu, 2011).

7

The opportunities and challenges in the area of cloud computing adoption in SMEs will

be examined as part of this research. The present study will entail analysing drivers

such as cost, resource utilisation, life-cycle management, service availability, vendor

lock-in, security and other external factors.

2.4 Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a way in which IT services taking many different forms can be de-

livered to organisations or the end user. Services such as streaming videos, delivery of

emails and mobile application downloads are currently widely available via cloud com-

puting. In addition, cloud computing powers many of the interactions among systems,

services and people that take place occur globally in the current dispensation.

Cloud computing is transforming the ‘delivery’ model of Information Technology (IT)

services. This is due to the requirements of increased digital solutions that organisations

need to remain competitive (Linthicum, 2013; Choudhary and Vithayathil, 2013; Dil-

lon et al., 2010). This transformation, significantly impacts a decision maker’s opinion,

when assessing the benefits that are associated with cloud computing. These perceived

advantages can be listed as: 1) cost savings 2) agility or flexibility 3) improved collab-

oration 4) efficiency for mobile and digital solutions (Noor et al., 2013; Trinh et al.,

2015; Oliveira et al., 2014). However, the adoption of cloud computing also comes with

a number of potential risks regarding 1) security 2) reliability 3) data privacy 4) regu-

latory compliance and 5) data protection laws amongst others (Yang and Tate, 2012;

Brender and Markov, 2013). Furthermore, migration to the cloud service elicits a num-

ber of concerns in addition to the fact that common procedures do not exist and tool

support is often absent (Jamshidi et al., 2013; Pahl et al., 2013). To further complicate

things, cloud represents the least transparent outsourcing model (Dutta et al., 2013).

Even so, there is still a growing demand for flexible and on-demand infrastructure,

platforms and software as a service (Armbrust et al., 2010; Subashini and Kavitha,

2011; Noor et al., 2013) capabilities. As a result, decision makers have to understand

the benefits and risks associated with cloud computing pertaining to their organisation

for this evolving technology.

This literature review will highlight multifarious factors that contribute positively to

an SMEs decision to adopt cloud computing. for instance, Truong (2010) the usage

of cloud to enhance competitive advantage. Furthermore, Berkeley’s view (Armbrust

et al., 2009), as one of the fundamental published research papers in cloud computing,

identifies several important benefits. The first benefit is the elimination of start-up

costs for new organisations or organisations starting a new project the requires new

8

computing resources. The pay-as-you-go feature of many cloud computing services also

helps to eliminate risks that are related to purchasing servers and data-centre services

(Leavitt, 2009).

Previous research has examined organisations from the knowledge intensive business

services (KIBS) sector which are referred to as those industries that rely heavily on the

use of professional knowledge, such as accounting, tax consulting, marketing, advertis-

ing and legal activities (Muller and Doloreux, 2007). Companies in this sector are best

placed to take advantage of the internet and related technologies for business inten-

tions (McCole and Ramsey, 2004; Peterson et al., 1997). As such, characteristics such

as industry and organisation size are fundamental and thus of in this research. These

characteristics play an important role in establishing whether organisations should mi-

grate to a cloud computing platform or not.

2.5 Recent Survey: Cloud First for Corporates and Chief

Nation

The ‘Cloud First for Corporates and Chief Nation’ survey, produced and published by

Auxilion (2015) in October 2015, is designed to provide a benchmark of the existing of

the existing cloud computing migration and adoption trends in the United Kingdom.

The survey was sent to over 1,000 senior IT decision-makers from corporate companies.

Cloud First for Corporates is a cloud thought-leadership resource purposely developed

to aid corporates to simplify their cloud journey, and to realise the accompanying ben-

efits. Auxilion is a global award-winning cloud transformation and support company,

specialising in moving corporates to cloud computing platforms.

As shown in Figure 2.1, twenty six percent of all companies have not even began using

cloud computing, whilst another forty percent are only using cloud computing for small

deployments. This raises questions as to why such a high number of companies are not

currently using any cloud computing capabilities given the perceived benefits that it

possesses.

In Figure 2.2, we can see that ‘scalability’ was the primary reason for adopting cloud

computing services, closely followed by the desire to dissociate from utilising in house

data centres.

Interestingly and as demonstrated in Figure 2.3, only 5 percent of surveyed business

have acknowledged a significant reduction in capital expenditure spend as a result of

cloud computing adoption. Given that the perception of cloud computing adoption is

9

Figure 2.1: Where is your organisation in terms of cloud deployment? (Auxilion, 2015)

Figure 2.2: What was your main driver for moving to the cloud? (Auxilion, 2015)

10

Figure 2.3: Has Cloud reduced your capital expenditure? (Auxilion, 2015)

11

a move away from capital expenditure, this is astonishing.

2.6 Challenges, Concerns and Barriers

In their most simplistic form, IT services and applications simply enable business pro-

cesses to be executed. Business process directors and other process leaders often see

moving business processes to a cloud computing platform as their ultimate objective

(Canatara, 2015). However, cloud computing is not the end goal – cloud computing is

merely a delivery model for abridging a specific business outcome or goal by utilising

less capital outlay. In addition, there are many different types and levels of cloud com-

puting services (Canatara, 2015). Business process (BP) directors and process leaders

must possess the capacity to distinguish between them. As a consequence, they can

understand which services have a higher likelihood of producing the desired business

outcome the quickest and at the lowest risk. Also, there are a number of factors that

need to be considered before migrating to a cloud computing platform (Lian et al.,

2014). These include financial and legal considerations as well as any impact on the

cultural shift within an organisation. Risks such as customer care, service quality, de-

pendency on third parties suppliers, and the absence of supporting resource need to be

determined. Furthermore, Lian et al. (2014) contend that since the business model of

cloud computing is pay-as-you-go, capital expenditure can be reduced by adopting the

cloud computing model.

Despite its growing popularity, several concerns surround the model. A recent study

conducted by Frost and Sullivan (2015) reported that cloud computing was one of the

major areas that represented risks from an organizational perspective, see Figure 2.4.

Within the context of the Cloud Security Alliance’s “Notorious 9 Security Threats,”

the survey respondents indicated their level of concern for each threat. Data breaches

and data loss topped the list of concerns.

2.6.1 Security

Security concerns present the greatest barrier to the adoption of cloud computing

adoption (Armbrust et al., 2010; Doherty et al., 2015; Luoma and Nyberg, 2011; Su,

2011), due to the demand for organizations to entrust external cloud computing ser-

vice providers with their business critical data. Other concerns include physical and

personal security in accessing machines and customer data, identity management, ap-

plication security and data confidentiality. Furthermore, privacy, from the perspective

of customer in publicly accessible data centres, as well as legalities surrounding data

12

Figure 2.4: CSA cloud security threats

protection, confidentiality, copyright and audits are the additional fundamental consid-

erations (Yang and Tate, 2009).

2.6.2 Internet Connectivity

Cloud computing services are dependant on the quality and availability of internet con-

nections in addition to the cloud computing service itself (Smyth, 2009). Subsequently,

business continuity concerns due to internet downtime, connection unreliability or cloud

computing service provider outages abound (Armbrust et al., 2010). In respect to Ire-

land and in relation to the availability of a good-quality Internet or broadband infras-

tructure, Ireland’s telecommunications market did not open up to competition until

late. This was due to only initiating general broadband deployment in 2002 (Doherty

et al., 2012). It may be because of this reason that by 2006, Ireland registered one of the

lowest rates of broadband penetration in Europe (Johnson, 2011). More recently, the

Irish government have adopted an aggressive approach to broadband rollout (Doherty

et al., 2012). Combined with the fact that Ireland has one of the youngest demograph-

ics in Europe, strong broadband growth has been seen in the last few years (Johnson,

2011). Having said this, much still needs to be done, as highlighted by OECD (2010)

report where Ireland was ranked a worrying 22nd out of 33 countries in terms of fixed

line broadband penetration rates.

13

2.6.3 Cloud Service Availability

Previous, significant outages by large cloud computing providers such as Amazon, Sales-

force.com and Google heightened concerns regarding the availability of services. In

addition, and from a non-technical perspective, non-availability of cloud computing

services due to the cloud computing provider exiting the market or being targeted due

to regulatory actions, formulate concerns (Mell and Grance, 2011).

2.6.4 Compliance and Regulation

According to Council (2011), ensuring compliance with local, regional and global statu-

tory and legal requirements represents a potential barrier to cloud computing adoption.

The physical location of the servers which store the customer’s data is significant under

many local country laws. This is as a consequence of national legislations regarding

privacy and data management. For example, within the EU, there are strict limitations

regarding the flow of information beyond the user’s jurisdiction (Iyer and Henderson,

2010).

2.6.5 Lack of Standards

There is no single standard open architecture for cloud computing. Each of the major

cloud computing providers impose their own architecture that are analogues from each

other. Due to this, migrating existing applications, such as complex multi tier appli-

cations to a cloud computing platform can be arduous (Smyth, 2009). Similarly, the

ability to move virtual machines and software as a service solution from one cloud com-

puting provider to another is strenuous. Furthermore, a lack of standardization and

resulting technology integration issues pose difficulties to cloud computing adoption

(Su, 2011).

2.6.6 Compatability

Compatibility is the degree to which an innovation is deemed to be consistent with an

organisation’s values and needs which is influenced by past experiences (Rogers, 2010).

It is vitally important for the adoption of new technology. Organisations are more

likely to adopt cloud computing if the technology used within is compatible with their

existing applications. In addition to this, cloud computing allows for organisations to

remain at the forefront of technology without impacting the current legacy IT systems

that may still need to be used (Sultan, 2011; Gupta et al., 2013; Ye et al., 2013).

14

2.6.7 Latency

Latency or the delay incurred in transferring data packets is of substantial concern when

operating applications in the cloud (Carcary et al., 2014). This case is particularly

essential for time-sensitive applications such as those used in financial markets and

international trading (Smyth, 2009). Latency across the internet is unpredictable and as

a consequence, performance unpredictability and the resultant data transfer bottlenecks

impact the realization of cloud computing (Armbrust et al., 2009; Yang and Tate, 2009).

2.6.8 Vendor Lock-in

Vendor lock-in can be a significant barrier to the adoption of cloud computing. In-

dividual vendors use unique and proprietary user interfaces, application programming

interfaces and databases. Hence, customers cannot readily move their data and pro-

grammes from one site to another. Customers are also vulnerable to cloud computing

service providers’ frequent price increases, reliability issues, or even business cessation

(Armbrust et al., 2009; Yang and Tate, 2009).

2.7 Outsourcing and Cloud adoption

The manner in which IT resources and services are provisioned within organisations is

closely associated with whether IT should be delivered internally or be sourced through

external providers (Fill and Visser, 2000). For some time now, the option to outsource

the delivery of IT services to an external service provider has been a favourable pro-

visioning option. This is attributed to characteristics such as cost, quality, flexibility

and competency advantages. As a result, outsourcing has become one of the most

important recent concepts in business, especially in light of the rapid developments in

information technology (Loh and Venkatraman, 1992). In order to gain a greater un-

derstanding regarding the evolution of cloud computing, a brief overview of the history

of outsourcing research is important. The insight should permit the evaluation of cloud

computing versus on-premise when comparing a traditional IT provisioning model to

a cloud computing provisioning model.

2.7.1 Traditional provisioning of IT Services

At the onset of the outsourcing evolution, focus was typically on the decision to source

IT services (infrastructure, applications and processes) either internally or externally

15

(Bohm et al., 2011). The primary reason for outsourcing is still mainly the character-

istic economical benefits, particularly the flexibility of costs and cost savings (Fisher

et al., 2008). In addition, non-financial benefits such as technological advantages, inno-

vations, strategic aims, and business-oriented advantages, such as an increasing service

quality or an increasing flexibility of the business are key anticipated outcomes with

regards to outsourcing (Loh and Venkatraman, 1992). The question of appropriate

scope of outsourcing follows discussions regarding outsourcing motives, potential ben-

efits and risks. This results in a dilemma which usually requires a decision to either

choose to execute upon selective or total outsourcing (Barthelemy, 2001). The question

concerning which efficiency gains can be obtained through outsourcing, compared to

the internal operation of IT often lingers. These questions often remain unanswered

since the efficiency of outsourcing is difficult to prove, which results in the reinstatement

of in-sourcing. Outsourcing is a key discussion point regarding the adoption of cloud

computing as an organisation is essentially taking an indirect decision to outsource

some or all of their IT services dependant on the cloud computing platform adopted.

2.7.2 Evolution from outsourcing to Cloud computing

The decision to adopt cloud computing across SMEs will be a ’make-or-buy decision,’

which is essentially an IT outsourcing decision. The examination of outsourcing chal-

lenges can lead to the abridgement of the linkage between cloud computing and out-

sourcing. This is due ot the fact that customers expect efficient and flexible delivery

of IT services from the outsourced provider with cost flexibility. In parallel, customers

are demanding innovation and added value from the same providers (Leimeister et al.,

2008). Cloud computing has emerged out of these demands that were raised by cus-

tomers. As a consequence, it hopes to offer the technological foundation that meets

a customer’s flexibility demands on a business level. Infrastructure providers, such as

Amazon or Google, which were previously active in other markets, have developed new

business models to market their former by-products (e.g. large storage and computing

capacity) as new products (Leimeister et al., 2008). In consequence, these suppliers

have entered the traditional outsourcing value chain and have started to compete with

established outsourcing service providers. These new service providers offer innovative

ways of IT provisioning through pay-per-use payment models and that help customers

to satisfy their needs for efficiency, cost reduction and flexibility (Bohm et al., 2011).

In traditional IT outsourcing exercises the scope or remit is usually split across a

number of areas; infrastructure, applications and business processes (Kakabadse and

Kakabadse, 2000). These core areas of outsourcing are then supported by strategy and

consulting activities. In each of these steps, the process is often referred to as ”plan,

16

build, run” and it must then be implemented and supported. Alternatively, single

aspects may be outsourced, such as the development of applications (Leimeister et al.,

2008). Furthermore, purchasing and operating IT hardware as well as hosting can be

further divided into services that can be done by the customers themselves (Bohm

et al., 2011). As a result, the variation in outsourcing options may lead to complex

outsourcing relationships (Gallivan and Oh, 1999). The traditional value chain that

can be applied for outsourcing within cloud computing becomes even more complex

with the introduction of different roles and actors (Jacob and Ulaga, 2008). These

roles and actors need to be factored into any model for determining the viability of

cloud computing adoption.

2.8 Cost Management

Cost is typically a key driver relating to the decision to move services from on-premise

to a cloud computing platform due to the perceived cost savings delivered by Cloud

(Marston et al., 2011). Initially, the first item to assess is the cost to create a data

center and to provide resource services. De Assuncao et al. (2009) have developed a

framework to calculate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) which factors in the number

of the necessary physical servers and storage required. As an example, it has previously

been estimated that the US government would, in the long run, save up to two thirds

of its IT expenses if it adopted cloud computing (Alford and Morton, 2009). Cloud

computing provides potential for significant cost reductions in, for example, capital

acquisition, IT infrastructure operations and maintenance costs (Aljabre, 2012; Geczy

et al., 2012). Organisations can switch from a capex to an opex cost structure (Kundra,

2011), eliminate start-up costs and expensive software purchases, and take advantage of

the pay-per-use model (Armbrust et al., 2010). Due to the lower utilization of physical

resources, there is less hardware to maintain and less demand for full-time network,

server, storage and virtualization experts (Jackson and Williams, 2011).

2.9 Organisational context and senior management sup-

port influence

Migration to cloud computing can help ensure optimised resource utilization within an

organisation. This can potentially be achieved by freeing up employee resources when

they are released from IT maintenance tasks and non-core activities to focus on core

business related skills and competences (Neves et al., 2011; Pyke, 2009).

17

Organisational context refers to a number of different factors. These factors include:

organisational size, remit, trust, centralisation, technology readiness, formalisation,

management structure and quality of employees, organisational readiness (from a tech-

nological and personnel perspective), innovativeness and the level of senior manage-

ment support (Oliveira et al., 2014; Brender and Markov, 2013; Son et al., 2011; Lin

and Chen, 2012; Sila and Dobni, 2012).

The support of senior management becomes extremely important for organisations look-

ing to create or maintain a competitive environment. It is also important that they

provide the appropriate resources (technical and infrastructure) required to deliver

cloud computing services. Senior management support helps in overcoming internal

barriers and any resistance to change. Senior management awareness pertaining to

the possible advantages of cloud computing adoption is crucial in overcoming potential

organisational change by creating an atmosphere of positivity regarding the new tech-

nology to all employees (Low et al., 2011). The reason senior management plays such

an import role is that the implementation of cloud computing can involve integration

of resources, activities and the redesign of certain processes (Yew Wong, 2005). As a

result, this factor is considered to have a significant impact on the adoption of cloud

computing.

2.10 Company Size and Innovation

An organisation’s size is a key factor that makes up an innovator’s profile (Ozsomer

et al., 1997). Large organisations have a higher tendency to adopt new IT innovations

compared to smaller organisations (Pan and Jang, 2008). This is mainly due to their

increased flexibility resulting in a greater aptitude and ability to take risks. Never-

theless, experimental results on what the correlation is between organisation size and

innovation (Damanpour, 1991) adoption often vary. According to Vahtera (2008), there

are numerous studies that unearth a positive correlation whilst other studies report a

negative correlation. A case can be made for the argument that the larger the organi-

sation, the greater its ability to survive any potential major incidents or outages when

compared to smaller organisations. Having said that, (Highsmith and Cockburn, 2001)

argue that smaller organisations can be more agile and creative as a result of their

size and the assumption that there is less bureaucracy. Whilst it has been reported

that cloud computing can be more attractive to SMEs (Sultan, 2011), industry reports

suggest that larger organisations have a higher likelihood of adopting cloud computing

services in comparison to smaller organisations (Geroski, 2000).

18

2.11 Technology Readiness and Utilisation

The phrase ‘Technology Readiness’ was coined by Parasuraman (2000). The reasoning

was that the propensity to embrace new technology for accomplishing certain goals is

determined by the overall state of mind resulting from a gestalt of mental contributors

and inhibitors. Organisations that are at the leading edge of technology are gener-

ally better positioned to adopt cloud computing (Harris et al., 2011). Because of this,

they are more aware of current IT infrastructure potential and limitations. Also, they

generally possess the capacity to provide the appropriate training to ensure the re-

quired capability to adopt cloud computing. Due to this, organisations that have the

technological readiness are better positioned to embrace cloud computing (Low et al.,

2011).

2.12 Vendor Relationships

Many organisations rely on cloud partners for the design and implementation of new

systems and solutions (Low et al., 2011). It is identified by Pan and Jang (2008) that

partner pressure is a key determinant for IT adoption. Organisations of all size and

scale rely on the expertise and skills of partners when seeking to adopt cloud com-

puting. Marketing activities, targeted communications and case studies of successful

implementations by partners can have a significant impact on a potential client’s deci-

sion regarding whether or not they will adopt new IT innovations. More specifically, IT

decision makers for these organisations will assess the partner’s capability with regards

to matters such as regulatory support (Alshamaila et al., 2013; Oliveira et al., 2014),

IT product portfolio management, application customisation (Gupta et al., 2013) and

vendor lock-in (Sultan, 2011).

2.13 Conclusion

Cloud computing is a phenomenon that will only grow and become more important

over time. There is no doubt that organisations will adopt cloud computing even when

taking into account the risks inherent in it. The application of this to SMEs will be

determined as part of the overall research. There are many potential benefits that can

emanate from the adoption of cloud computing. Based on the research, it will become

apparent that cloud computing may not be the easy fix that it is sold to be and this

is a problem that warrants further research. Issues that arise from cloud computing

19

can result in financial implications, loss of reputation or data loss/theft. Therefore, the

decision to adopt cloud computing needs to be investigated thoroughly. This research

attempts to enhance the comprehension of the current cloud computing factors that

may influence its adoption. It is also hoped that this research may then aid other or-

ganisations in making the right decision concerning whether to adopt cloud computing

or not. Cloud computing supposedly provides potential for significant cost reductions

primarily in capital expenditure, IT infrastructure operations and maintenance costs.

Migration to a cloud computing platform can also potentially free up resource uti-

lization. This may be the resultant effect of freeing up internal resources, with staff

released from IT maintenance and non-core activities training their focus on core skills

and competences. With cloud computing, the majority of control and responsibility

shift from the customer to the cloud service provider (CSP) to provide availability of

services, data protection, resiliency, auto-repair and disaster recovery mechanisms.

As part of the literature review, we have attempted to identify the different issues that

will affect the numerous stakeholders involved in the decision making process regarding

cloud computing adoption. Many applications that are specifically used by SMEs are

general-purpose in nature, and therefore offer potential economies of scale through cloud

computing services. This research argues that understanding the organizational benefits

and drawbacks is far from straightforward. The adoption of cloud computing results in a

considerable amount of organizational change that will affect peoples work in significant

ways. Along with the potential benefits of cloud computing, there are challenges that

can impact its attractiveness. System downtime forms part of the concern, whereas the

complexity of cloud computing implementations and the compatibility with existing in-

house on-premise applications is another one. Even though cloud computing has been

seen as an important technology that can provide strategic and operational benefits,

the rate of implementation is not as progressive as one would expect across SMEs.

Hence, it is necessary to develop a framework that allows SMEs to determine whether

they should adopt cloud computing.

20

Chapter 3

Specification

3.1 Specification

In order to support SMEs in their decision making process, a framework will be de-

veloped which incorporates technological, organisational, privacy, security, availability,

continuity and other external variables. The AWS Well-Architected Framework refers

to the four pillars of cloud computing as security, performance, reliability and cost.

Figure 3.1: AWS architecture framework Amazon (2015)

My claim for this research is that cloud computing is a more advantageous and beneficial

platform for delivering IT services specifically for SMEs when compared to on-premise

technology. In order to prove this claim, a cloud decision making framework will be

developed. Input will be sought from industry experts who are currently working in

the cloud computing sales and implementation sectors of the information technology

21

industry. In addition, SMEs themselves will have the option to complete the framework

via a cloud hosted solution. Based on their data input and the associated output, a

conclusion will be drawn which will essentially support the researchers argument. Fur-

thermore, this claim will be supported by the statistical analysis that will be completed

across all data pertaining to the experimental evaluation.

The population for this research will be comprised of seven modules including 1) or-

ganisation profile 2) infrastructure life cycle 3) availability and continuity 4) security,

privacy and regulation 5) software and applications 6) external factors and 7) cost.

Each module will have a sub-population known as attributes. The attributes are the

individual criteria that when pooled collectively create the overall content for the frame-

work. The collective assessment of these attributes will enable us to answer the research

questions.

The population of this research will be made up of industry experts who form their own

views on cloud computing adoption and stakeholders of SMEs’ stakeholders who impact

strategic decision making regarding IT. Sampling will be conducted across stakeholders

in the form of interviews, completion of questionnaires and submission of completed

framework evaluations.

Within each module, attributes that will form the foundation for the data gathered will

be established. In turn, this data will produce an output that 1) recommends SMEs

should move IT services to the Cloud 2) Evaluate their environment in greater detailed

and then prepare to move IT services to the Cloud or 3) Remain On-Premise. As part

of this research, a CDMF (Cloud Decision Making Framework) will be created to solve

real world decision-making problems (Asghar et al., 2009). It is proposed that as a

component of this research, the new framework will be developed to assist SMEs to

determine if they should move IT services to a cloud computing platform in preference

of on-premise technology.

22

Chapter 4

Design

The aim of this chapter is to provide the design goals of the newly created framework

that will help to establish if cloud computing is a more advantageous delivery model

for IT services in comparison to on-premise technology. The analysis of this problem

was completed in the Literature review. In addition, the literature review provided

significant evidence that supports the belief of the researcher that there is an absence

of available comprehensive frameworks available to answer this question. Particularly,

in the case of SMEs, it is clear that additional research is required with regards to cloud

computing adoption.

It is the researcher’s conviction that this framework will be a significant enhancement

on existing research in this particular field. The previous completed research in the area

would include other decision making models and frameworks that have were developed

primarily for large enterprises, singles standalone systems or applications. As part of

the present research, the researcher is incorporating a significant number of modules,

themes and attributes that impact the decision of SMEs to move to cloud computing

instead of gaining from on-premise technology.

Numerous alternative tools, methodologies and frameworks have been analysed in order

to develop the proposed newly created ’cloud decision making framework’. The (MC2)

model (Menzel et al., 2011), the TOE framework (NSA Ireland, 2012), the OS34CP

(Outsourced service selection model) (Ni et al., 2012) and the Swift10 (NSA Ireland,

2012) have all been reviewed, researched, analysed and assessed as part of current

research.

The researcher wants to understand if cloud computing provides a better delivery model

for IT services compared to on-premise for SMEs. In order to establish the appropri-

ateness of this model, a variety of modules and attributes need to be established and

23

determined. They will be in the form of quantitative and qualitative formats. To

support the claim, the cloud decision making framework’ will be created. The CDMF

will provide a comprehensive, and systematic evaluation of an SME’s suitability for the

adoption of cloud computing when relative to on-premise.

4.1 Cloud Options

With the rapid evolution of capabilities being deployed by cloud computing providers,

the options and features are evolving at a precipitous pace. New capabilities for in-

stance; identity as a service and disaster recovery as a service are starting to gather

momentum and uptake. In the overall scope of present research, the primary focus will

be on the more mature and traditional platforms available to SMEs. There are 3 cloud

platforms that can be leveraged by SMEs depending on what IT services are assessed

in the overall context of moving IT services to the cloud. These are Infrastructure as a

Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

4.2 Current On-Premise

Currently, most established SMEs that benefit from traditional on-premise infrastruc-

ture are comprised of local comms rooms or an off-site hosting facility for data centre

capability. The server, networking and storage footprint is predominantly made up of

physical servers utilising a Hypervisor for virtualisation with either locally attached or

network attached storage. Networking is made up of a mixture of routers and switches

with some resiliency built in. All aspects of this configuration requires day to day man-

agement, maintenance and upgrades as and when required. This leads to considerable

complexity that requires the SME to have IT staff or a costly relationship with a third

party IT provider in place to oversee. Alternatively, with cloud computing, and AWAS

as an example, when AWS services are introduced, a project team utilizes an AWS ac-

count, the virtual network is configured in the cloud, and computing environments are

launched in a matter of minutes and ready for use Amazon (2015). The environments

can be reconfigured easily, scaled up or down automatically to meet usage patterns

and optimize spending, or shut down temporarily or permanently. The billing for AWS

services becomes an operational expense rather than a capital expense Amazon (2015).

24

4.3 Design of the Cloud Decision Making Framework

Before developing the architecture of the framework, a work flow was established as

depicted in Figure 4.1 that outlines how the data will be gathered to assist with the

creation of the framework.

4.3.1 Workflow

In order to establish the CDMF, a work flow had to be formulated in order to determine

the required modules in addition to the quantitative attributes, qualitative attributes

and the associated measurements. The work flow in Figure 4.1 outlines how this data

was collected.

Figure 4.1: CDMF workflow

4.3.2 Establish criteria

This maiden step identifies the attributes and data that will undergo examination. It

permits us to form a view regarding qualitative attributes and also to establish baseline

metrics for quantitative attributes.

25

4.3.3 Confirm requirements

This step in the work flow enables us to make certain that we have captured all the nec-

essary attributes. It acts as a check to ensure we have included all required attributes.

4.3.4 Build CDMF

The CDMF will be built using a rules-based engine that takes into account all the

different attributes, a comparison of the quantitative attributes for on-premise versus

cloud computing, and the surveyed results. Similarly, it determines the recommended

approach for SME.

4.3.5 Apply CDMF

Results are calculated, producing a recommendation for the SME regarding the adop-

tion of cloud computing. Once the result is produced, the researcher will be able to

provide an output in order to support the claim.

4.4 Modules and Variables

Once the workflow has been established, the framework can be developed. Differ-

ent variables were identified initially and determined based on the research that was

conducted within the Literature Review. The establishment of these modules and

attributes was established based on research and consolation with industry experts.

The attributes themselves can be broken into qualitative and quantitative attributes

as depicted in Figure 4.2 and Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.2: Quantative attributes

26

In Figure 4.3, a catalogue of the different qualitative attributes are outlined. These

attributes cannot be clearly measured in terms of numbers or metrics. These attributes

are more subjective and are based on different views and opinions of the individual SME.

Moreover, they will play a crucial role within the framework.

Figure 4.3: Qualative attributes

Once the attributes have been identified, we are then able to formulate the proposed

decision making Framework as shown in Figure 4.4

Figure 4.4: CDMF

As discussed in the literature review, cloud computing is a solution that leads to a

move away from SMEs owning, managing and maintaining infrastructure and software

(model dependent). The consequence is a solution that delivers services over the in-

ternet from 3rd party owned data centres known as ’the cloud’. The cloud decision

making framework will incorporate aspects of technical, economic and social aspects

27

when it comes to determining if it makes overall business logic to realign IT services

to a cloud computing platform. By incorporating all of these attributes, he present

research intends to create a comprehensive decision making framework which is yet to

be developed.

4.5 Evaluation

The current research purposes are to investigate the opportunities, barriers and bene-

fits that can be realised and also considered when adopting cloud computing for SMEs.

Through literature research, investigating and understanding the experiences, opinions

and views of selected industry experts and ultimately having SMEs complete a frame-

work, the researcher will determine if SMEs currently using on-premise IT services

should move these IT services to the cloud.

The researchers interest in this particular area is influenced by a personal bias since

he currently works in this field. Also, the researcher would like to use the present

research to enhance his career and personal development. Given the fact that research

objectives outline what the research wishes to achieve, then the personal objectives of

the researcher should also be considered. It is recommended by Maylor and Blackmon

(2005) that the addition of these individual research objectives is catered for to address

learning or career development objectives.

The achievement of excellence in the present research is majorly dependant on whether

it is defined by specificity, focus and a well-defined direction. Bryman and Bell (2015)

charge that in order to establish the research focus, the development of research objec-

tives derived from the research question should be completed.

The researchers framework is partly developed from the researcher’s personal and pro-

fessional interest and experience as the researchers is currently employed by an SME.

The two approaches that can be taken regarding research are inductive and deductive

(Saunders, 2011). The deductive approach incorporates the creation of a research

hypothesis, tests the theory and then the design of the research strategy which is

leveraged to test the hypothesis. The inductive methodology formulates theories from

observations and has the flexibility to take into account the context in which they are

taking place. Given this fact, the researcher is solely interested in the context in which

events and situations occur as well as the human interactions with the Cloud Decision

making Framework.

28

It is of fundamental significance that the formulated research strategy permits the re-

searcher to answer the research question and subsequently meet the research objectives.

There are a number of approaches that can be utilised including the following: exper-

iments, surveys, case studies and archival research. The decision by the researcher to

use a combination of experiments, surveys, archival research and interviews is based

on a detailed literature review to support the research dissertation. The researcher

also wants to gain a comprehensive understanding of the real-world context of the re-

search and the rationale that results in successful outcomes in the adoption of cloud

computing.

Regarding the research method, the researcher has two choices according to Saunders

(2011); mono-method and multi-method. The mono-method applies a single data col-

lection approach with an associated analysis technique. Perfect solutions for research

choices don’t exist. However the synthesis and comprehension of complex data that has

been gathered in a technical area such as this forms a significant part of the present

research. The researcher is also constrained by the time required to carry out the

research and this leads them to elect a single data collection approach. Noting the

previous statement, the quality of the research will not be affected ensuring that the

research question is answered and the objectives are met.

According to van der Zee and Han (2001), frameworks and models are common in iden-

tifying factors for success in technology initiatives based around business performance

indicators or ROI models. Furthermore, Bouwman et al. (2005) states that by paying

attention to technical, economic and organisational factors in addition to physiological

ones, and looking at things from an organisational perspective more so than a technical

one can allow for a framework to be created. The established framework will cater

for the analysis or technology and process within an organisation. Further support is

provided by Iyer and Henderson (2010) when they propose that a ’maturity model of

cloud readiness’ is developed based on seven capabilities.They recommend developing

a scorecard to assist with the decision process across controlled interface, location in-

dependence, sourcing independence, ubiquitous access, virtual business environments,

addressability and traceability and rapid elasticity.

The aim of the CDMF is to prove that cloud computing is a more appropriate delivery

mechanism for SMEs for IT services compared to on-premise. To do this correctly, there

are many attributes that need to be assessed. To conduct the assessment accurately, we

must be able to clearly compare some of these attributes within the different scenarios

(cloud v on-Premise).

The benefit of cloud computing is that SMEs will no longer need to be concerned

29

about the technical configuration or maintenance of the underlying components such

as servers, storage or networking. However, adopting cloud computing may present

other issues or implications. This is why the researcher expects that the CDMF un-

derstands this and incorporates all the attributes when settling on a decision. The

CDMF will incorporate technical, economic and social aspects in determining whether

the movement of IT services to the cloud constitutes overall business logic.

4.5.1 Cost

Cost is an important consideration when thinking about moving IT services from on-

premise to the cloud. Cost will play a significant part in determining if SMEs should

move to the cloud. Even though the cloud is marketed as a more cost effective thus

cheaper solution compared to on-premise, it is the view of the author that cloud and

on-premise are much the same from a cost perspective when compared. As an example,

outlined in Figure 4.5 is a sample of different costs associated with AWAS, an SME

currently analysing the cost impact of moving Email and Share-point to the Microsoft

Cloud offering ’Office 365’.

Figure 4.5: Office365 comparison

30

As can be seen from Figure 4.5 the cost saving differences are negligible. Like for like,

it is difficult to see an obvious reason as to why services should be moved to the cloud

from the cost perspective. Office365 as software as a service. Infrastructure as a service

present different challenges. This is again true when trying to compare On Premise

costs to a Cloud based solution. Part of the challenge is that Cloud providers for IaaS

usually provide on-line pricing calculator based on VM’s per minute or per hours as

shown below in Figure 4.6.

Figure 4.6: Azure cloud calculator

In order to be able to compare like for like, a TCO calculator has been developed

as part of this research to compliment the Framework. Given the fact that cost is not

considered a fundamental pillar in this particular framework the TCO calculator should

be used as an additional tool. In order to be able to understand clearly the kind of

costs that are associated with IT infrastructure, the template below and it incorporates

all of the components needed to get a true TCO are listed below in Figure 4.7.

Each major section within the template has been allocated an acronym as shown in

Table 4.1.

The challenge that engulfs the assessment of the cost advantages that cloud computing

possess over on-premise entail the fact that cloud computing providers quote prices

based on usage per minute or per hour. On-Premise infrastructure is typically priced

or ’costed’ on a yearly basis. In addition, on-premise costs are rarely ever quantified in

terms of CPU, memory or even storage. In an effort to address this challenge, a formula

has been developed to provide a Cost by VM per month for On-Premise Infrastructure

as indicated in Equation 4.1. By deriving a Cost by VM per month,the ability to

calculate per hour and per minute becomes straight forward. This then enables an

easy comparison of On-Premise costs versus Cloud costs.

31

Figure 4.7: TCO template

32

Table 4.1: TCO acronyms

Acronym Description

HC Hosting and Comms room maintenanceP Premise costs

PC Platform costs (Initial cost on the equipment that the platform runs on)L Licensing

SM Support and maintenance (once initial Warranty has expired)MS Managed Service costsOP Other Projects (additional projects implemented including hardware costs that

have added to the platform)T Telecommunications (Associated Network and communications costs

as a result of on-premise)r Cost of capital (typically a %)V VMs supported (assume small increase year on year)N Total Number of Years that the analysis applies to.

For the purpose of this study, we will be using 5 Years.

MonthlyTCOperVM =∑ HCn+Pn+PCn+Ln+SMn+MSn+OPn+Tn

(1+r)n

V1+V2+V3+V4+V5N

(4.1)

Total cost of ownership is derived over ’x’ number of years. This is a key aspect of

calculating the ROI in terms of Cloud adoption and has been missing in numerous

researches that have been studied as part of this Thesis.

33

Chapter 5

Implementation

The literature review identified the themes, issues and opportunities that are relevant

to SMEs who wish to adopt cloud computing. This chapter sets out the decisions and

choices pertaining to the research methodology and methods used to develop th cloud

decision making framework.

5.1 Research Methodology

Researchers need to consider how they define small businesses and ensure that they do

not avoid adopt simple quantitative definitions (Curran and Blackburn, 2000) as it is

not appropriate to compare a sole trader to a business employing over 200 employees.

Moreover, it is possible that a business of a dozen employees may generate much greater

revenues compared to that of a large enterprise. SME research is not a pure research

discipline in itself and it can be argued that SMEs can be a difficult topic for research

compared to larger enterprises primarily because they typically lack clear structures

and their propositions are more difficult to test (Curran and Blackburn, 2000). By

describing the research methodology, the researcher is determining the course of action

that will ultimately lead to the collection of data, which will be analysed thereby giving

validity to the research. This analysis will provide the framework for developing a theory

and also answering the research question, thus meeting the research objectives (Creswell

et al., 2007). The researcher is going to select the appropriate research approach by

referring to the ‘Research Onion’ model (Saunders, 2011).

The decision by the researcher to select a qualitative research approach is justified. The

research approach is discussed taking into account the philosophy of the researcher and

34

the primary objective, which entails the development of cloud decision making frame-

work to drive the adoption of cloud computing across SMEs. Secondly, the identification

and selection of ’decision modules’ and ’attributes’ within these modules are discussed

and the methods that will be utilised to analyse the resulting data are proposed. Fi-

nally, the reliability and validity of the research decisions are outlined and ethical issues

are considered.

Even though there are other determinants, the seven modules within the cloud deci-

sion making framework are hypothesized to have the most significant roles as direct

determinants of adoption:

H1: Has an organisation got the appropriate mindset and philosophy for the adop-

tion of cloud computing? The organisational profile, which refers to the ’mind set’

of the organisation, in essence lacks any association with technology but rather how

an organisation is set-up, its ethos and values with regard to qualitative variables are

intrinsically linked to the adoption of cloud computing.

H2: When is the best time to evaluate on-premise alternatives? The current Infras-

tructure Life cycle indicates that typically, when current on-premise infrastructure has

reached end of life, then the situation presents the most opportunistic point in time to

assess alternative cloud computing options.

H3: Do customers understand the current and future availability and continuity re-

quirements and can cloud computing offer a better alternative than what is currently

in place?

H4: Is cloud computing secure enough for an organisation? Where is data stored and

who has access to it? Security, privacy and regulation are perceived as some of the

biggest barriers to cloud computing adoption even though, for some organisations it

isn’t even an issue for organisations that wish to adopt cloud computing.

H5: Will software and applications run across the cloud computing environment? Un-

derstanding an application portfolio is crucial, especially its configuration, the appli-

cation and relationship that it has with storage performance, databases and other

infrastructure components.

H6: What are the other things organisations do not think of or consider that need

to be researched before adopting the cloud computing? Connectivity is crucial, the

cloud computing experience will only ever be as good as the associated connectivity.

In addition, the relationship that an organisation establishes with its cloud computing

partner is really important. The cloud computing partner must have proven experience

and industry accreditation.

35

H7: Will cloud computing be more cost effective than on-premise? This will depend

on the services that will be moving to the cloud computing platform. The probability

is that one on one, cloud computing will not be cheaper but will offer a subscription

and opex based approach to consuming services rather than capex.

5.2 Research Design

Data collection was carried out between February 2016 and May 2016. Primarily, face

to face interviews were utilised. Face to face interviews are a technique appropriate for

exploratory research such as this due to the ability to carry out expansive discussions

that it offers, and which can highlight factors of significance (Yin, 2013). It was impor-

tant to make certain that the quality of the detail and information gathered within the

interviews was high. Furthermore, ensuring that the interview process was reliable and

repeatable was equally fundamental. An ’audit trail’ was created both through note

taking and audio recordings of interviews starting with data collection. This process

was maintained and repeated until the actual creation of the framework.

In order to create the framework, a number of procedures were followed; (i) identifying

and selecting cases (ii) identifying the interviewees and (iii) determining how interviews

were to be conducted. Interviewees were senior decision makers with direct experience

of assessing the adoption of cloud computing and implementations involved therein.

A standard interview protocol was developed. Each interview was structured around

a ’questions and answers’ approach, with the interviewer asking probing questions.

The interviews consumed approximately 20 to 30 minutes in duration. The interviews

matured after each previous one was completed and lessons had been learnt and the

improvements identified. The questions were primarily open-ended, encouraging inter-

viewees to express their own views and opinions based on their industry experience.

The interviews were recorded with the consent of the interviewees and the primary ob-

jective of doing this was to simplify the subsequent analysis. At the end of the sessions,

the interviews were then transcribed, proof-read and annotated by the researcher. Each

transcript is added as an appendices. In addition, venting was used, results and the

researcher’s interpretations were discussed with other professional colleagues to avoid

the issue of multiple realities (Kaplan and Duchon, 1988). The approach and findings

were regularly informally presented and discussed with other industry professionals and

colleagues. Where ambiguity arose, clarification was sought via email or via a phone

call to the interviewee. Additional documentation regarding Cloud adoption within the

IT industry was collected and reviewed.

36

5.3 Designing the Framework

The objective of the research was to design a high quality framework that provides value

to the customers using it, identify the barriers to cloud computing adoption, and also

consider potential future commercial opportunities that may surface as a result. Whilst

the framework is comprehensive, every effort has been made to ensure it is simple to

use and concise. In it’s infancy, the framework was developed in Microsoft excel so as

to offer the flexibility required to develop, test, update and finalise it. This meant that

as feedback and direction were being obtained, the necessary modifications required

were relatively easy to implement as shown in Appendix D. Numerous iterations of

the framework were developed. Initially, it was deemed that the Framework contained

too much content and would distract the customer form it. It was reckoned that

’usability’ would be a key requirement in developing the Framework. Feedback was

sought regarding this and the framework was subsequently modified accordingly. To

avoid this first potential problem, it is imperative that the investigator defines precisely

the information desired and the endeavour to write as few questions as possible to obtain

it. Peripheral questions and ones that are intended to find out something that might

just be nice to know must be avoided (Frary, 1996). A clearly defined reason for every

question was established. Feedback was solicited from a number of industry experts

who deal with cloud computing on a daily basis. These included Mark Carragher

- Technical Director with Qualcom, Declan Ryan, Managing Director - The Project

Foundry, Gareth Jayes, Account Director - BT, Simon Sparrow - Cloud sales specialist

- Microsoft. Feedback was obtained from these highly experienced resources in order

to validate the inputs within the framework.

The cloud decision making framework is an ASP.NET web application, developed in

Visual studio 2015, and deployed as a web app in Azure App Services. The process

involved two steps as follows; 1) Creating a new web app via Visual studio 2015 and

2) deploying a web project to an app service. In order to achieve this, the researcher

created an app Service web app from within Visual Studio 2015 by creating a new ’Web

project’ in Visual Studio. We then deployed a ’Web project’ to an App Service web

app in Azure as shown in Figure 5.1.

5.4 Prerequisites

An Azure account is required, so we used a free Azure account and an MSDN subscrip-

tion for Visual Studio 2015.

37

Figure 5.1: Creating a web app and project

38

5.4.1 Visual Studio 2015

It is a rich, integrated development environment for building applications for different

Operating systems such as Windows, Android, and iOS, as well as modern web appli-

cations and cloud services. Visual Studio 2015 supports the creation of applications

and services that work across Android, IOS and Windows devices.

5.4.2 Azure Web App services

Web apps on Azure app Service provides a high quality platform as-a service environ-

ment for hosting web applications.

5.4.3 SQL Server express

SQL server express offers the same database engine as the full version but is tailored

particularly for redistribution and embedding. SQL Server Express includes 10GB of

storage per database, easy backup and restore to Microsoft Azure functionality.

The cloud decision amking framework can be found at the following location:

http://cloudframework.azurewebsites.net/

39

Chapter 6

Evaluation

In total 39 Frameworks were completed by organisations interested in moving IT ser-

vices to the Cloud. Encouragingly, 95% of these organisations found the framework to

be of benefit, 2.5% found the framework of some benefit and 2.5% found the framework

of no benefit as shown in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1: CDMF of benefit?

The majority of organisations were based in Ireland but organisations in Australia,

Bahrain, New Zealand and the United States completed the framework as demonstrated

in Figure 6.2.

All organisations are deemed as being 1) in a position to move services to the cloud

40

Figure 6.2: Completed frameworks by country

41

immediately and 2) in a strong position to move services to the cloud but with some

further analysis required see Figure 6.3. As can be seen from figure 6.3 no organisation

is encouraged to continue using on-premise. This result indicates extremely strongly

that SMEs should move IT services to the cloud rather than remaining on-premise.

This result supports the hypothesis originally formed.

Figure 6.3: Cloud direction

Of the IT services that SMEs are considering moving to the cloud, the results varied.

Not all the assessed SMEs are currently seeking to move all IT service to the cloud as

shown in Figure 6.4.

Whilst 33% of SME organisations wanted to move all IT services, 23% were seeking to

move email only, 28% were considering moving all infrastructure services and 15% all

software. Interestingly, the range of services that organisations are considering mov-

ing is well spread across different services and capabilities. Cloud providers market

cloud as a way of reducing cost and providing the ability for organisations to remove

capital expenditure from their balance sheet. The results of the completed framework

demonstrated shown that the majority of organisations have a preference for blending

operational expenditure with capital expenditure pertaining to their financial manage-

ment as shown in Figure 6.5. This indicates that organisations may encounter some

42

Figure 6.4: Cloud services under consideration

43

challenges and barriers that they will need to consider if moving all services to the

cloud.

Figure 6.5: Opex and capex options

Previously, we have discussed previously that cloud is essentially another form of out-

sourcing. Organisations need to ensure that they are comfortable with outsourcing

certain aspects of their IT environment to cloud service providers before finally decid-

ing to adopt it. As shown in Figure 6.6, only 15% of all organisations that completed

the framework are currently fully satisfied with moving IT services fully into an envi-

ronment that is controlled by a cloud provider.

12% haven’t even given this variable any consideration, whilst 71% appear to be rea-

sonably content. Nevertheless, the decision requires further investigation. As shown in

Figure 6.7, 95% of organisations have not had exposure to a framework similar to the

cloud decision making framework.

Finally, based on completed frameworks, the findings show that no SME within the

sample pool of organisations should remain on-premise and that all organisations should

move immediately to the cloud or are very strong candidates but require some further

analysis as shown in figure 6.8.

With regard to the key findings identified after analysing the framework data, other

key points have been identified, see appendix G for the high level scoring by variable.

Some of the key points that were identified were as follows; 1) The majority of the or-

ganisations the completed the framework have a mixture of browser and Client/server

44

Figure 6.6: Cloud provider control handover

Figure 6.7: Come across other similar frameworks?

45

Figure 6.8: Cloud recommendation

configured applications; these client/server applications would require a detailed review

and testing plan to confirm if they would perform appropriately in a cloud environment.

If these applications did not perform accordingly, then a full redesign of them would be

needed. Interestingly, most organisation believe that their current application portfolio

is ’cloud ready’. The majority of organisations have a reasonable understanding as

to their current application portfolio in terms of IOP requirements 2) A considerable

percentage of the organisations that completed the framework are governed or are re-

quired to adhere to strict privacy laws. This would require organisations to ensure that

they wouldnot be contravening any privacy laws by potentially moving any of their

data or applications to the cloud. In addition, a high number of organisations that

completed the framework are required to meet some form of standards (e.g. ISO) that

their business achieves in terms of certification on an annual basis. Organisations also

have a requirement that some or all data may be required to reside in a particular ge-

ographical location. 3) From a security perspective, the majority of organisations will

continue to have the ability to execute their own penetration tests and that current

pen testing data and results provided by cloud providers will not meet the customer’s

requirements. 4) Every organisation apart from two organisations claim that they expe-

rience outages on a regular basis or from time to time. Furthermore, regular scheduled

maintenance impacts the availability of services. Cloud could offer a great opportunity

to minimise or significantly reduce service availability. A surprising finding revealed

that most companies do not have the requirement for disaster recovery capabilities.

5) The majority of organisations are dependent on single resources and see this as a

risk. Cloud offers the possibility to minimise this risk by moving responsibility for

aspects of the offering on to the cloud provider. 6) Most organisations have made an

46

assumption that their current Internet connectivity is appropriate for leveraging cloud

services but have not validated this. The realisation that internet connectivity is a

crucial underpinning capability in order to deliver cloud services has not been made.

In terms of the crucial findings, 7) the relationship between the cloud channel partner

and the customer most improve significantly. A major finding related to this research

involved the fact that customers believe that cloud vendors (as opposed to the cloud

owners) do not possess the appropriate experience and certification pertaining to cloud

technologies and implementations. Customers also believe that cloud vendors are not

having appropriate discussions with customers regarding cloud roadmaps, opportuni-

ties and capabilities that drive efficiencies and reduce costs. Relationships driven by

these vendors need to improve dramatically, especially between them and customers. 8)

most organisations regularly reach their current utilisation capabilities from a compute

perspective. The flexibility and scalability of cloud provides the prospect to eliminate

this issue comprehensively from an organisation’s environment. Finally, 9) Only one

organisation had a preference for an ’operational expenditure’ only financial model,

most organisations that completed the framework prefer a blend of capital and oper-

ational expenditure, how cloud can facilitate this requirement given cloud services are

typically on a subscription basis needs to be overcome.

6.1 Organisational Feedback

As part of the framework, feedback was requested from organisations that took their

time to complete the process. Of particular interest was the Users of the framework

generally felt that the process was thought provoking and asked the questions in their

IT environment that they had not considered previously. Listed below is some of the

feedback received:

Noel Ginty (AWAS) ’Very comprehensive’.

Shibu Abraham (Bahrain Duty free) ’Excellent tool for assessment’.

Simon Joyce (Carlow software consulting) ’It has made me think more about our ap-

plications and our readiness to move to cloud. I was not surprised by the final outcome.

Derek Hennessey (CSL) ’It has pretty much reinforced my thoughts around cloud

for my company. We don’t use apps that are suited to the cloud or have in-

house developers to leverage DevOps. We are only now looking at micro segmentation

47

within our networking infrastructure but our applications portfolio is extremely heavily

biased towards 3-tier architectures running with either SQL or Oracle on the back end’.

Padraig Carroll (Acsys) ’We are in year one still on start-up, so it got me thinking of

planning for tech we might need’.

Niall Duggan (Avnet) ’It highlights some aspects we hadn’t thought of and is helpful

in making a decision to move forward’.

Mark Oloughlin (IT Alliance) ’Very interesting, could be a good commercial tool

plugged into offerings by IT providers’.

Enda Farrell (Caboom) ’Interesting approach. Surprised by result’.

48

Chapter 7

Conclusions

There is no doubt that cloud computing offers SMEs a more effective and advantageous

computing platform over traditional on-premise solutions. We have proven that most

SMEs are very well placed to adopt cloud computing and replace their traditional on-

premise solutions. SMEs do not always have the resources or expertise themselves to

make accurate decisions supported by data to justify technological implementations or

strategic changes. Our framework provides a simplified solution covering the core topics

and associated variables that SMEs must consider when determining if cloud comput-

ing is right for their organisation. Furthermore, we have proven that some challenges

exist regarding cloud computing adoption. If these critical issues can be surmounted, a

dramatic increase in cloud computing by SMEs could be inevitable. Challenges faced

by SMEs such as single resource dependency, a managing and resolving availability

outages can be efficiently addressed by the adoption of cloud computing. Cloud com-

puting providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google need to ensure an appropriate

eco-system with channel partners is in place. Furthermore, these cloud partners must

engage with customers pro actively and effectively to bring them on a cloud journey.

From a finance perspective, in the event that cloud computing providers can offer cost

models that leverage a blend of operational and capital expenditure, then this will

eliminate a significant barrier to cloud adoption within the SME sector. Interestingly,

we have discussed cost as part of this research but it has not been identified as a key

variable for cloud computing adoption. The rationale for this is that in most cases, like

for like from a pure compute perspective, cloud may actually be more expensive than

on-premise solutions. SMEs are well placed to adopt cloud computing. Supported by

the cloud decision making framework, SMEs now have the capability to form an ac-

curate perspective consisting of challenges, barriers, benefits and opportunities formed

specifically for their organisation relating to cloud computing adoption

49

7.1 Future work

Our cloud decision making framework has been developed to allow SMEs to easily

determine their suitability for cloud computing adoption. Throughout the research,

various organisations both on the customer side and the supplier side suggested that

the framework offers a commercial opportunity. The ability to have cloud vendors

integrate their cloud services directly into the framework provides an immense pos-

sibility for commercial cloud offerings to be presented directly to the customer. The

real-time interrogation of the assembled data during the period that the customer com-

pletes the framework could permit the cloud supplier the opportunity to provide an

end-to-end cloud offering that is particularly tailored to meet the customer’s desires

instantaneously.

Further research is required regarding why cloud suppliers are not addressing the short

comings in their cloud offerings. By potentially working with the cloud suppliers, and

highlighting the areas that customers believe have existing gaps and then consequently

addressing these, cloud computing adoption could increase greatly.

50

Bibliography

Alford, T. and Morton, G. (2009), ‘The economics of cloud computing’, Booz Allen Hamilton .

Aljabre, A. (2012), ‘Cloud computing for increased business value’, International Journal of Business

and Social Science 3(1), 234–239.

Alshamaila, Y., Papagiannidis, S. and Li, F. (2013), ‘Cloud computing adoption by smes in the north

east of england: A multi-perspective framework’, Journal of Enterprise Information Management

26(3), 250–275.

Amazon (2015), ‘Aws well-architected framework’, Amazon Web Services.

Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., Lee, G., Patterson, D.,

Rabkin, A., Stoica, I. et al. (2010), ‘A view of cloud computing’, Communications of the ACM

53(4), 50–58.

Armbrust, M., Fox, O., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, Y., Konwinski, A., Lee, G., Patterson, D.,

Rabkin, A., Stoica, I. et al. (2009), ‘M.: Above the clouds: a berkeley view of cloud computing’.

Asghar, S. et al. (2009), A survey on multi-criteria decision making approaches, in ‘Emerging Tech-

nologies, 2009. ICET 2009. International Conference on’, IEEE, pp. 321–325.

Auxilion (2015), ‘Auxilion corporate uk cloud adoption and transformation report 2015’.

URL: http://www.cloudfirstforcorporates.co.uk/

Babcock, C. (2010), ‘Management strategies for the cloud revolutions: How cloud computing is trans-

forming businesses and why you cant afford to be left behind’, New, NY: McGraw-Hill .

Barthelemy, J. (2001), ‘The hidden costs of it outsourcing’, MIT Sloan management review 42(3), 60.

BCSG (2015), ‘The small business revolution: trends in smb cloud adoption’.

Bohm, M., Leimeister, S., Riedl, C. and Krcmar, H. (2011), Cloud computing–outsourcing 2.0 or a new

business model for it provisioning?, in ‘Application management’, Springer, pp. 31–56.

Borbas, L. et al. (2009), A critical analysis of the small business act for europe, in ‘MEB International

Conference Budapest’.

Bouwman, H., Van Den Hooff, B. and Van De Wijngaert, L. (2005), Information and communication

technology in organizations: adoption, implementation, use and effects, Sage.

51

Brender, N. and Markov, I. (2013), ‘Risk perception and risk management in cloud computing: Results

from a case study of swiss companies’, International journal of information management 33(5), 726–

733.

Bridge, S. and O’Neill, K. (2012), Understanding enterprise: Entrepreneurship and small business,

Palgrave Macmillan.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2015), Business research methods, Oxford University Press, USA.

Canatara, M. (2015), ‘What business process leaders need to know about using cloud’.

Carcary, M., Doherty, E. and Conway, G. (2014), ‘The adoption of cloud computing by irish smes–an

exploratory study’, Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation Volume 17(1).

Choudhary, V. and Vithayathil, J. (2013), ‘The impact of cloud computing: Should the it department

be organized as a cost center or a profit center?’, Journal of Management Information Systems

30(2), 67–100.

Columbus, L. (2015), ‘forbes roundup of cloud computing forecasts and market estimates q3 update,

2015’.

URL: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/09/27/roundup-of-cloud-computing-

forecasts-and-market-estimates-q3-update-2015

Conway, G. (2011), ‘Introduction to cloud computing’.

Conway, G. and Curry, E. (2012), Managing cloud computing-a life cycle approach., in ‘CLOSER’,

pp. 198–207.

Council, A. P. (2011), ‘SIM saas, iaas and paas: Realities and emerging integration issues’.

URL: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.simnet.org/resource/resmgr/apc/saas-report-cover-final-

comb.pdf

Creswell, J. W., Hanson, W. E., Plano, V. L. C. and Morales, A. (2007), ‘Qualitative research designs

selection and implementation’, The counseling psychologist 35(2), 236–264.

Curran, J. and Blackburn, R. (2000), Researching the small enterprise, Sage.

Damanpour, F. (1991), ‘Organizational innovation: A meta-analysis of effects of determinants and

moderators’, Academy of management journal 34(3), 555–590.

De Assuncao, M. D., Di Costanzo, A. and Buyya, R. (2009), Evaluating the cost-benefit of using

cloud computing to extend the capacity of clusters, in ‘Proceedings of the 18th ACM international

symposium on High performance distributed computing’, ACM, pp. 141–150.

del Rosal, V. (2015), ‘Business moving to the cloud’, College Lecture, National College Ireland, Dublin.

Dillon, T., Wu, C. and Chang, E. (2010), Cloud computing: issues and challenges, in ‘Advanced

Information Networking and Applications (AINA), 2010 24th IEEE International Conference on’,

Ieee, pp. 27–33.

Doherty, E., Carcary, M. and Conway, G. (2012), ‘Risk management considerations in cloud computing

adoption’.

52

Doherty, E., Carcary, M. and Conway, G. (2015), ‘Migrating to the cloud: Examining the drivers and

barriers to adoption of cloud computing by smes in ireland: an exploratory study’, Journal of Small

Business and Enterprise Development 22(3), 512–527.

Dutta, A., Peng, G. and Choudhary, A. (2013), ‘Risks in enterprise cloud computing: the perspective

of it experts’, Journal of Computer Information Systems 53(4), 39–48.

Dwivedi, Y. K. and Mustafee, N. (2010), ‘It’s unwritten in the cloud: the technology enablers for realis-

ing the promise of cloud computing’, Journal of Enterprise Information Management 23(6), 673–679.

European, C. (2008), ‘The small Business act for Europe smes’.

URL: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/business-friendly-environment/small-business-act/index-

en.htm

Fill, C. and Visser, E. (2000), ‘The outsourcing dilemma: a composite approach to the make or buy

decision’, Management decision 38(1), 43–50.

Fisher, J., Hirschheim, R. and Jacobs, R. (2008), ‘Understanding the outsourcing learning curve: A

longitudinal analysis of a large australian company’, Information Systems Frontiers 10(2), 165–178.

Frary, R. B. (1996), ‘Hints for designing effective questionnaires’.

Frost and Sullivan (2015), ‘ICS the 2015 (isc)2 global information security workforce study’.

URL: https://www.isc2cares.org/uploadedFiles/wwwisc2caresorg/Content/GISWS/FrostSullivan-

(ISC)%C2%B2-Global-Information-Security-Workforce-Study-2015.pdf

Gallivan, M. J. and Oh, W. (1999), Analyzing it outsourcing relationships as alliances among multiple

clients and vendors, in ‘Systems Sciences, 1999. HICSS-32. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii

International Conference on’, IEEE, pp. 15–pp.

Geczy, P., Izumi, N. and Hasida, K. (2012), ‘Cloudsourcing: managing cloud adoption’, Global Journal

of Business Research 6(2), 57–70.

Geroski, P. A. (2000), ‘Models of technology diffusion’, Research policy 29(4), 603–625.

Gong, C., Liu, J., Zhang, Q., Chen, H. and Gong, Z. (2010), The characteristics of cloud computing, in

‘Parallel Processing Workshops (ICPPW), 2010 39th International Conference on’, IEEE, pp. 275–

279.

Gupta, P., Seetharaman, A. and Raj, J. R. (2013), ‘The usage and adoption of cloud computing by

small and medium businesses’, International Journal of Information Management 33(5), 861–874.

Hadidi, R. (2010), ‘Exploring the use of swot analysis in the adoption of cloud computing services for

small and medium-sized enterprises (smes)’, European Journal of Management 10(3), 109–116.

Harris, J. G., Ives, B. and Junglas, I. (2011), ‘The genie is out of the bottle: managing the infiltration

of consumer it into the workforce’, Accenture Institute for High Performance .

Highsmith, J. and Cockburn, A. (2001), ‘Agile software development: The business of innovation’,

Computer 34(9), 120–127.

IDC (2014), ‘Public it cloud services spending’.

53

Iyer, B. and Henderson, J. C. (2010), ‘Preparing for the future: Understanding the seven capabilities

cloud computing.’, MIS Quarterly Executive 9(2).

Jackson, K. L. and Williams, R. (2011), ‘The economic benefit of cloud computing’, GM, Cloud

Services. Executive Summary. Disponıvel em:¡ http://www. njvc. com/form/downloadrequest/N-

JVC The Economic Benefit of Cloud Computing. pdf/¿. Acesso em 10(01), 2013.

Jacob, F. and Ulaga, W. (2008), ‘The transition from product to service in business markets: An

agenda for academic inquiry’, Industrial marketing management 37(3), 247–253.

Jamshidi, P., Ahmad, A. and Pahl, C. (2013), ‘Cloud migration research: a systematic review’, Cloud

Computing, IEEE Transactions on 1(2), 142–157.

Johnson, T. (2011), ‘PointTopic broadband coverage in europe in 2011’.

URL: https://www.isc2cares.org/uploadedFiles/wwwisc2caresorg/Content/GISWS/FrostSullivan-

(ISC)C2B2-Global-Information-Security-Workforce-Study-2015.pdf

Kakabadse, N. and Kakabadse, A. (2000), ‘Critical review-outsourcing: A paradigm shift’, Journal of

Management Development 19(8), 670–728.

Kaplan, B. and Duchon, D. (1988), ‘Combining qualitative and quantitative methods in information

systems research: a case study’, MIS quarterly pp. 571–586.

Kundra, V. (2011), ‘Federal cloud computing strategy’.

Leavitt, N. (2009), ‘Is cloud computing really ready for prime time?’, Computer (1), 15–20.

Leimeister, S., Bohmann, T. and Krcmar, H. (2008), Is outsourcing governance in innovation-focused

relationships: An empirical investigation., in ‘ECIS’, pp. 2245–2256.

Lian, J.-W., Yen, D. C. and Wang, Y.-T. (2014), ‘An exploratory study to understand the critical

factors affecting the decision to adopt cloud computing in taiwan hospital’, International Journal of

Information Management 34(1), 28–36.

Lin, A. and Chen, N.-C. (2012), ‘Cloud computing as an innovation: Percepetion, attitude, and adop-

tion’, International Journal of Information Management 32(6), 533–540.

Linthicum, D. (2013), ‘Cloud adoption’s tipping point has arrived’, InfoWorld .

Loebbecke, C., Thomas, B. and Ullrich, T. (2012), ‘Assessing cloud readiness at continental ag’, MIS

Quarterly Executive 11(1), 11–23.

Loh, L. and Venkatraman, N. (1992), ‘Determinants of information technology outsourcing: a cross-

sectional analysis’, Journal of management information systems pp. 7–24.

Low, C., Chen, Y. and Wu, M. (2011), ‘Understanding the determinants of cloud computing adoption’,

Industrial management & data systems 111(7), 1006–1023.

Luoma, E. and Nyberg, T. (2011), Four scenarios for adoption of cloud computing in china., in ‘ECIS’.

Marston, S., Li, Z., Bandyopadhyay, S., Zhang, J. and Ghalsasi, A. (2011), ‘Cloud computingthe

business perspective’, Decision Support Systems 51(1), 176–189.

54

Maylor, H. and Blackmon, K. (2005), Researching business and management: A roadmap for success,

Palgrave Macmillan.

McCole, P. and Ramsey, E. (2004), ‘Internet-enabled technology in knowledge-intensive business ser-

vices: A comparison of northern ireland, the republic of ireland and new zealand’, Marketing intel-

ligence & planning 22(7), 761–779.

Mell, P. and Grance, T. (2011), ‘The nist definition of cloud computing’.

Menzel, M., Schonherr, M., Nimis, J. and Tai, S. (2011), ‘(mc2) 2: A generic decision-making framework

and its application to cloud computing’, arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.1851 .

Mircea, M. and Andreescu, A. I. (2011), ‘Using cloud computing in higher education: A strategy to

improve agility in the current financial crisis’, Communications of the IBIMA 2011, 1–15.

Muller, E. and Doloreux, D. (2007), The key dimensions of knowledge-intensive business services (kibs)

analysis: a decade of evolution, Technical report, Arbeitspapiere Unternehmen und Region.

Neves, F. T., Marta, F. C., Correia, A. M. R. and Neto, M. d. C. (2011), ‘The adoption of cloud

computing by smes: identifying and coping with external factors.’.

Ni, J., Qi, L. and Yan, C. (2012), A selection strategy supporting service outsourcing in cloud platform,

in ‘Cloud and Green Computing (CGC), 2012 Second International Conference on’, IEEE, pp. 726–

729.

Noor, T. H., Sheng, Q. Z., Zeadally, S. and Yu, J. (2013), ‘Trust management of services in cloud

environments: Obstacles and solutions’, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 46(1), 12.

NSA Ireland, N. S. A. (2012), ‘Adopting the cloud decision support for cloud computin’.

OECD (2010), Oecd broadband portal, OECD.

Oliveira, T., Thomas, M. and Espadanal, M. (2014), ‘Assessing the determinants of cloud comput-

ing adoption: An analysis of the manufacturing and services sectors’, Information & Management

51(5), 497–510.

Ozsomer, A., Calantone, R. J. and Di Bonetto, A. (1997), ‘What makes firms more innovative? a look at

organizational and environmental factors’, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 12(6), 400–

416.

Pahl, C., Xiong, H. and Walshe, R. (2013), A comparison of on-premise to cloud migration approaches,

in ‘Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing’, Springer, pp. 212–226.

Pan, M. and Jang, W. (2008), ‘Determinants of the adoption of enterprise resource planning within the

technology-organization-environment framework: Taiwan’s communications’, Journal of Computer

information systems 48(3), 94.

Parasuraman, A. (2000), ‘Technology readiness index (tri) a multiple-item scale to measure readiness

to embrace new technologies’, Journal of service research 2(4), 307–320.

Peterson, R. A., Balasubramanian, S. and Bronnenberg, B. J. (1997), ‘Exploring the implications of

the internet for consumer marketing’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing science 25(4), 329–346.

55

Pyke, J. (2009), ‘Now is the time to take the cloud seriously’, White Paper,

at: www. cordys. com/cordyscms sites/objects/bb1a0bd7f47b1c91ddf36ba7db8 8241d/-

time to take the cloud seroiusly online 1 . pdf .

Riemenschneider, C. K., Harrison, D. A. and Mykytyn, P. P. (2003), ‘Understanding it adoption

decisions in small business: integrating current theories’, Information & management 40(4), 269–285.

Rogers, E. M. (2010), Diffusion of innovations, Simon and Schuster.

Sarkar, P. K. and Young, L. W. (2011), ‘Sailing the cloud: a case study of perceptions and changing

roles in an australian university.’.

Saunders, M. N. (2011), Research methods for business students, 5/e, Pearson Education India.

Sila, I. and Dobni, D. (2012), ‘Patterns of b2b e-commerce usage in smes’, Industrial Management &

Data Systems 112(8), 1255–1271.

Sin Tan, K., Choy Chong, S., Lin, B. and Cyril Eze, U. (2010), ‘Internet-based ict adoption among smes:

Demographic versus benefits, barriers, and adoption intention’, Journal of enterprise information

management 23(1), 27–55.

Smith D, P. D. (2015), Agenda overview for cloud computing, 2015, Gartner.

Smyth, P. (2009), ‘Cloud computing–a strategy guide for broad level executives’, Kynetix Technology

Group report .

Son, I., Lee, D., Lee, J.-N. and Chang, Y.-B. (2011), Understanding the impact of it service innovation

on firm performance: The case of cloud computing., in ‘PACIS’, p. 180.

Street, C. T. and Meister, D. B. (2004), ‘Small business growth and internal transparency: The role of

information systems’, MIS quarterly pp. 473–506.

Su, N. (2011), ‘Emergence of cloud computing: an institutional innovation perspective’.

Subashini, S. and Kavitha, V. (2011), ‘A survey on security issues in service delivery models of cloud

computing’, Journal of network and computer applications 34(1), 1–11.

Sultan, N. A. (2011), ‘Reaching for the cloud: How smes can manage’, International journal of infor-

mation management 31(3), 272–278.

Trinh, T. P., Pham, C. H. and Tran, D. (2015), ‘An adoption model of software as a service (saas) in

smes’.

Truong, D. (2010), ‘How cloud computing enhances competitive advantages: A research model for small

businesses’, The Business Review 15(1), 59–65.

Vaezi, R. (2012), ‘Cloud computing: a qualitative study and conceptual model’.

Vahtera, A. M. (2008), Organisational factors affecting it innovation adoption in the finnish early

childhood education., in ‘ECIS’, pp. 1106–1116.

van der Zee, I. and Han, T. (2001), Measuring the value of information technology, IGI Global.

Weiss, A. (2007), ‘Computing in the clouds’, Computing 16.

56

Yang, H. and Tate, M. (2009), Where are we at with cloud computing?: a descriptive literature review,

in ‘20th Australasian conference on information systems, Melbourne’, pp. 2–4.

Yang, H. and Tate, M. (2012), ‘A descriptive literature review and classification of cloud computing

research’, Communications of the Association for Information Systems 31(2), 35–60.

Ye, N., Yang, S. S. and Aranda, B. M. (2013), ‘The analysis of service provider-user coordination for

resource allocation in cloud computing’, Information-Knowledge-Systems Management 12(1), 1–24.

Yew Wong, K. (2005), ‘Critical success factors for implementing knowledge management in small and

medium enterprises’, Industrial Management & Data Systems 105(3), 261–279.

Yin, R. K. (2013), Case study research: Design and methods, Sage publications.

Zhang, Q., Cheng, L. and Boutaba, R. (2010), ‘Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research chal-

lenges’, Journal of internet services and applications 1(1), 7–18.

57

article:loebbecke2012assessing

58

Appendix A

Interview data

Interview 1: Declan Ryan

Hi Declan, thanks for taking the time out to discuss the Cloud decision

making Frameworkl which I am developing. This forms part of my Dis-

sertation associated with a masters in Cloud computing with the national

college of Ireland.

The focus of my Thesis, is the development of a Cloud decision mak-

ing framework in the context of SMEs currently using on-premise IT

services.

This questionnaire hopes to leverage your experience with regards to

Cloud assessment and implementations that you have delivered or are

going to deliver on behalf of customers in the SME sector.

Please Note: Interviews will be recorded

Q.1. Based on your interactions with Customers, what are the main IT

services that customers are looking to migrate to the Cloud for?

Q.2. When you talk to customers, do customers have a good understand-

ing of the opportunities/concerns with moving to the cloud and have they

completed a good level of analysis?

59

Q.3. In your opinion, when you are talking to customer about Cloud adop-

tion, what are the main reasons they have for adopting the Cloud?

Q.4. When customers inquire about the Cloud, what are there 5 main con-

cerns they have? E.g. data location, security, availability, cost management.

Q.5. When enquiring about Cloud migration, are customers able to provide

or understand clearly the detailed breakdown of their current IT portfolio

from a cost perspective?

Q.6. The list below contains what I believe to be the key variables that

influence the adoption of Cloud

• Cost

• Organisational Factors

• Current IT Environment lifecycle

• System availability/DR/BCP requirements

• Security & Privacy

• Software/Application environment

• Partner/Vendor capabilities/Relationship management

In your opinion, are there any missing key variables?

Q.7. In your opinion, for customers that have adopted Cloud, has Cloud

delivered the results these customers have expected?

Q.8. With regards to the decision making framework, do you feel that

this is something that could be adopted in the Industry to help customers

determine their Cloud suitability?

Q.9. Recent research has indicated that further enhancements to the frame-

work are required to cater for Database utilisation and IOP requirements.

Would you agree with these additions?

Q.10. What changes/improvements would you make to the model?

60

Interview 2: Gareth Jayes

Interviewee: Gareth Jayes

Organisation: BT

Role: Account Director

Date of Interview: 8th April 2016

This questionnaire is in the context of implementations that you have

delivered or are going to deliver on behalf of customers in the SME sector

in the context of on-premise infrastructure being replaced by Cloud.

Note: Interviews will be recorded and I will be taking extensive notes.

Q.1. Based on your interactions with Customers, what are the main IT

services that customers are looking to migrate to the Cloud for?

In my experience customers are looking at hybrid models, a number are looking at

creating their own Cloud PBX after exploring a Cloud voice and PBX provider.

There is also a large interest in Office 365 and connecting corporate networks to

Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, with direct connections rather than via

internet links.

The other main service that is becoming increasingly popular is having access to cloud

hosted services, where you can activate VM’s and build out applications quickly all

over the world depending on where you wish the server to be based. Considerations

customers are taking to this is, speed of deployment, agility to build what is required,

security of data, costs, easy access over internet.

Q.2. When you talk to customers, do customers have a good understanding

of the opportunities/concerns with moving to the cloud and have they

completed a good level of analysis?

No they are inconsistent, different customers have a focus or one or 2 areas, i.e.

security and speed of setup and some focus solely on the cost, assuming security and

a number of other factors rightly or wrongly.

The eventually complete a strong level of analysis, however it consumes more time and

effort than expected.

61

Q.3. What are the 5 top ‘Services’ that customers inquire about in terms

of replacing on-premise Infrastructure with Cloud capability?

On site servers, migrating to DC/cloud (depending on the varying service this could

be spilt out to 2 or 3 areas).

PBX replacement

Unified Communications ( S4B, Cisco Jabber etc)

Q.4. In your opinion, when you are talking to customer about Cloud adop-

tion, what are the main reasons they have for adopting the Cloud?

I feel there is an element of ‘keeping up with the jones’ that encourages IT teams to

start to review and from that analysis different reasons come out:

In no particular order:

• Cost (Capex vs Opex)

• Choice

• Security of Shadow IT

• Agility & flexibility

• Availability

• Security

• Compliance with market regulation (ISO/PCI etc)

Q.5. When customers inquire about the Cloud, what are there 5 main con-

cerns they have? E.g. data location, security, availability, cost management

Main concerns are as above, depending on the role, IT, Finance, HR, business unit

manager would alter the order of the key concerns.

Q.6. When enquiring about Cloud migration, are customers able to provide

or understand clearly the detailed breakdown of their current IT portfolio

from a cost perspective?

They have an overview understanding, however as their IT has evolved and built up

over time, there are elements they forget about or missed when reviewing.

Q.7. The list below contains what I believe to be the key variables that

influence the adoption of Cloud

62

• Organisational Factors

• Current IT Environment lifecycle

• System availability/DR/BCP requirements

• Security & Privacy

• Software/Application environment

• Partner/Vendor capabilities/Relationship management

Q.8. In your opinion, are there any missing key variables?

Need for agility/flexibility/speed of deployment (if a customer needs to create/activate

a service for business requirements quickly that IT haven’t been notified of or to create

it in house would require CAPEX investment and also procurement processes can be

lengthy).

Q.9. In your opinion, for customers that have adopted Cloud, has Cloud

delivered the results these customers have expected?

In some cases, such as moving applications to Cloud (DC) in all cases Im aware of has

increased end user satisfaction and removed bottle necks on the network. So customers

are realising benefits.

I have seen a number of customer, who have deployed Cloud based PBX, have

moved back to full on-prem or built their own in-house cloud PBX, due to cost and

control/functionality/flexibility issues.

Q.10. With regards to the decision making model, do you feel that this

is something that could be adopted in the Industry to help customers

determine their Cloud suitability?

Yes, I think there is strong merit in the idea, as there is a high level of detail which will

open up a number of areas for consideration/thought which will make the customer

significantly more informed.

Q.11. What changes/improvements would you make to the model?

I would possibly challenge some of the scoring, such as around:

What is the total IT user count in your organization? Small organisations may be in a

better position to adopt cloud that large.

However as I have stated above, I think of Cloud as more tactical with a short term

requirement or requirement for speed and agility over long term deployment.

63

Interview 3: Mark Carragher

Interviewee: Mark Carragher

Title: Technical Director Qualcom

LinkedIn Profile: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/markcarragher

Interview took place on 22 March 2016

Hi Mark, thanks for taking the time out to discuss the Cloud decision

making model which I am developing. This forms part of my thesis for a

masters in Cloud computing with the national college of Ireland.

The focus of my Thesis, is Cloud decision making in the context of SMEs

using on-premise IT services.

This questionnaire hopes to leverage your experience with regards to

Cloud assessment and implementations that you have delivered or are

going to deliver on behalf of customers in the SME sector in the context of

on-premise infrastructure being replaced by Cloud.

Please Note: Interviews will be recorded and I will be taking extensive notes

Q.1. Based on your interactions with Customers, what are the main IT

services that customers are looking to migrate to the Cloud for?

Q.2. When you talk to customers, do customers have a good understand-

ing of the opportunities/concerns with moving to the cloud and have they

completed a good level of analysis?

Q.3. What are the 5 top ‘Services’ that customers inquire about in terms

of replacing on-premise Infrastructure with cloud capability?

Q.4. In your opinion, when you are talking to customer about Cloud adop-

tion, what are the main reasons they have for adopting the Cloud?

Q.5. When customers inquire about the Cloud, what are there 5 main con-

cerns they have? E.g. data location, security, availability, cost management

64

Q.6. When enquiring about Cloud migration, are customers able to provide

or understand clearly the detailed breakdown of their current IT portfolio

from a cost perspective?

Q.7. The list below contains what I believe to be the key variables that

influence the adoption of Cloud

• Cost

• Organisational Factors

• Current IT Environment lifecycle

• System availability/DR/BCP requirements

• Security & Privacy

• Software/Application environment

• Partner/Vendor capabilities/Relationship management

In your opinion, are there any missing key variables?

Q.8. In your opinion, for customers that have adopted Cloud, has Cloud

delivered the results these customers have expected?

Q.9. With regards to the decision making model, do you feel that this is

something that could be adopted in the Industry to help customers deter-

mine their Cloud suitability?

Q.10. What changes/improvements would you make to the model?

65

Interview 4: Simon Sparrow

Hi Simon, thanks for taking the time out to discuss the Cloud decision

making model which I am developing. This forms part of my thesis for a

masters in Cloud computing with the national college of Ireland.

The focus of my Thesis, is Cloud decision making in the context of SMEs

using on-premise IT services.

This questionnaire hopes to leverage your experience with regards to

Cloud assessment and implementations that you have delivered or are

going to deliver on behalf of customers in the SME sector in the context of

on-premise infrastructure being replaced by Cloud.

Please Note: Interviews will be recorded and I will be taking extensive notes

Q.1. Based on your interactions with Customers, what are the main IT

services that customers are looking to migrate to the Cloud for?

Things I can stop doing, i.e. SaaS applications – mail, collaboration, etc. are easy

wins.

Test & Dev infrastructure

Development of new LOB apps

Q.2. When you talk to customers, do customers have a good understanding

of the opportunities/concerns with moving to the cloud and have they

completed a good level of analysis?

Sometimes yes and sometimes no. It is part of the cloud provider/cloud service partner

to help them understand all opps and concerns at this moment in time – especially if

they ar only starting out on a cloud adoption journey.

Q.3. What are the 5 top ‘Services’ that customers inquire about in terms

of replacing on-premise Infrastructure with Cloud capability?

VM’s for either Test’n’dev or for lift & shift

Identity and access management

SaaS based apps (CRM, Collaboration, email., etc.)

66

Storage

Application platform for development (PaaS)

Q.4. In your opinion, when you are talking to customer about Cloud

adoption, what are the main reasons they have for adopting the Cloud?

Cost

Ease of management (albeit this may not be the case)

They are using SaaS based applications in their organisation without any level of

management of access or identity and want to control this without taking away the

efficiencies they are receiving from the services.

Q.5. When customers inquire about the Cloud, what are there 5 main con-

cerns they have? E.g. data location, security, availability, cost management

Security – but this more now how can you help us understand what we need to do

rather than a blocker

Cost management – how do I ensure that the costs don’t balloon

Data management – which includes location – depending on the sector one talks to –

i.e. Public Sector would be more interested in this area.

Design – what is the difference between on-premise application design versus designing

for cloud, and how will that affect them.

Q.6. When enquiring about Cloud migration, are customers able to provide

or understand clearly the detailed breakdown of their current IT portfolio

from a cost perspective?

Some can tell you the exact cost of running a VM, and some can’t. Some use online

tools to do estimates, but understand they need help to size correctly. Others haven’t

a rashers – but want to learn.

Q.7. The list below contains what I believe to be the key variables that

influence the adoption of Cloud

• Cost

• Organisational Factors

• Current IT Environment lifecycle

• System availability/DR/BCP requirements

67

• Security & Privacy

• Software/Application environment

• Partner/Vendor capabilities/Relationship management

In your opinion, are there any missing key variables?

Software development lifecycle and relevant skillsets (designing for the cloud)

Q.8. In your opinion, for customers that have adopted Cloud, has Cloud

delivered the results these customers have expected?

In general terms, yes, as long as they scoped it well up front. Specifically around SaaS

based applications.

Q.9. With regards to the decision making model, do you feel that this

is something that could be adopted in the Industry to help customers

determine their Cloud suitability?

Yes – but it may need a cloud service provider (i.e. partner, not MS.AWS, Google) to

help the customer fill in.

Q.10. What changes/improvements would you make to the model?

The summary is too little – getting one score for the amount of data provided is too

little.

I would give an overall score, but then also give specific area score underneath – as we

discussed when we met.

68

Appendix B

Cloud decision making

Framework development

Below is evidence of the number of iterations that the cloud decision making model

went through throughout the Thesis.

Figure B.1: Different itterations of CDMF

Below, in the next 2 images is a demonstration is to how the decision making framework

started off at a very high level.

Below is an outline as to how the model evolved over time and came to its final stage

before being developed in Visual studio.

69

Figure B.2: Sample 1 extract from CDMF

Figure B.3: Sample 2 extract from CDMF

70

Figure B.4: Sample 3 extract from CDMF

71

Appendix C

The published Cloud Framework

Below is a screen shot of the Cloud decision making framework Welcome page.

Figure C.1: CDMF Welcome page

Below is a screen shot of the registration page.

Below is a print screen of the Framework once registered.

Below is a print screen of the Framework once it has been completed

72

Figure C.2: CDMF registration page

Figure C.3: CDMF post registration and instructions

73

Figure C.4: CDMF output and score

74

Appendix D

Sample Excel Models

75

Appendix E

ASP.NET web app to Azure App

Service using Visual Studio

Outlined below are the steps to configure and implement the Cloud decision making

framework solution. The solution is built with Microsoft visual studio 2015 and Azure.

E.1 Prerequisites

Some ASP.NET MVC and Visual Studio experience is required. I had to create an

Azure account, I created a ‘pay as you go’ account. I also created an MSDN account

for Visual studio 2015.

Figure E.1: Creating a web app and project in Azure

Configuring the web project in Visual Studio

76

1. I launched Visual Studio 2015.

2. Selected File > New > Project.

3. Within the New Project dialog box, selected Visual C# > Web > ASP.NET Web

Application.

4. I confirmed that the .NET Framework 4.6.1 was selected as the target framework.

5. I ensured that the ‘Azure Application Insights’ option was selected. This monitors

the web app for availability, performance, and usage.

6. I named the application ‘CloudFramework’.

Figure E.2: Cloudframework

7. In the New ASP.NET Project dialog box, select the MVC template, and then

click Change Authentication.

8. In the New ASP.NET Project dialog box, I selected the MVC template, and

then clicked Change Authentication.

9. In the Change Authentication dialog box, click No Authentication, and then

click OK.

10. Then I had to ensure the Microsoft Azure section of the New ASP.NET

Project dialogue box was selected as well as the Host in the cloud and App Service

in the drop-down list.

These settings direct Visual Studio to create an Azure web app for your web project.

77

Figure E.3: Selecting a Template

Figure E.4: Change Authentication

Figure E.5: Hosted in the Cloud and app services

78

Configure Azure resources for a new web app

Next, I had to tell Visual Studio about the Azure resources that I wanted created

11. In the Create App Service dialogue, I clicked Add an account, and then

signed in to Azure with the ID and password of the account for my Azure subscription.

(I used my College ID).

12. I entered a Web App Name that was unique in the azurewebsites.net domain. In

this instance, I used http://cloudframework.azurewebsites.net/.

13. Click the New button next to the Resource Group box, and then enter “MyEx-

ample” or another name if you prefer.

14. A resource group is a collection of Azure resources such as web apps, databases,

and VMs.

The Configure App Service Plan dialog appears.

Figure E.6: Service plan

15. Next, I had to configure an App Service plan. An App Service plan specifies the

compute resources that your web app runs on. I selected the free tier my API app

79

runs on shared VMs.

Visual Studio creates the project and web app

16. Visual Studio creates the web project and the web app. The Solution Explorer

within Visual studio window shows the files and folders in the new project.

Figure E.7: Web Project

17. The Azure App Service Activity window shows that the web app has been created.

18. The Cloud Explorer window shows you the Azure resources which I am able to

then control and manage, including my new web app.

80

Deploy the web project to the Azure web app

19. Next, I needed to deploy the web project to the web app, to do this, I did the

following:

20. In Solution Explorer, right-click the project, and choose Publish.

21. The Publish Web wizard appears. The wizard opens to a publish profile that has

settings for deploying the web project to the new web app.

22. The publish profile includes a user name and password for deployment. These

credentials have been auto generated, and I am not required to enter them. The

password is encrypted in a hidden user-specific file in the Properties > PublishProfiles

folder.

23. On the Connection tab of the Publish Web wizard, click Next.

Figure E.8: Publish App

24. Settings tab - I can change the build configuration to deploy a debug build for

remote debugging. The tab also offers several File Publish Options.

25. On the Settings tab, click Next.

81

Figure E.9: Publish Options

26. The Preview tab is next. Here you have an opportunity to see what files are going

to be copied from your project to the API app. When you’re deploying a project to

an API app that you already deployed to earlier, only changed files are copied. If you

want to see a list of what will be copied, you can click the Start Preview button.

27. On the Preview tab, click Publish.

Figure E.10: App preview

82

28. When you click Publish, Visual Studio begins the process of copying the files to

the Azure server.

29. The Output and Azure App Service Activity windows show what deployment

actions were taken and report successful completion of the deployment.

Figure E.11: Overall status

30. Upon successful deployment, the default browser automatically opens to the URL

of the deployed web app, and the application that you created is now running in the

cloud. The URL in the browser address bar shows that the web app is loaded from the

Internet.

Figure E.12: Framework

83

Appendix F

Creating the SQL database and

setting up Firewall rules on the

Azure portal

1. I connected to the Azure portal.

2. I clicked New , typed in SQL Database and then clicked SQL Database (new logical

server)

Figure F.1: New SQL database

3. I clicked Create in order to open a template in order to create an empty logical

server that can host the single database.

84

4. I provided the details for the following server properties:

• Server name

• Server admin login

• Password

• Subscription (only if have multiple subscriptions)

• Resource group (new or existing)

• Location

Figure F.2: SQL setup

5. I clicked Create and in the notification area

6. Had to wait for the deployment to finish before proceeding

85

Figure F.3: Creating CDMF database

86

F.1 Create a new Azure SQL server-level firewall

1. In the default blade, I clicked SQL Server.

Figure F.4: Deployement started

2. In the SQL Server blade, I clicked the SQL server on which to create the firewall

rule.

Figure F.5: SQL Firewall setup

3. In the Settings blade, I clicked Firewall. I added in a number of different IP address

as I was working from different wireless networks

87

Figure F.6: SQL Firewall settings

88

Appendix G

Completed framework analysis

The below figures show a detailed breakdown of the analysis completed based on com-

pleted frameworks.

89

Fig

ure

G.1

:C

DM

Fva

riab

lesc

orin

g-

cou

nt

90

Fig

ure

G.2

:C

DM

Fva

riab

lesc

orin

g-

per

centa

ge

91