of information technology. A recent survey by the Forrester Group
indicates that SaaS is a priority for 74% of Chinese firms, with 29%
planning to pilot SaaS projects in the next 12 months. In contrast, the
survey found that a majority of European or American firms is
interested but have no plans to pursue SaaS [47]. An impressive
example of the power of cloud computing in developing countries
comes from Ethiopia, where the government has commissioned the
cloud computing provider FullArmor to remotely manage 250,000
laptops with teachers throughout the country. The laptops will contain
sensitive teacher and student data, and information like syllabi and
class material will be managed centrally. In order to prevent security
breaches, if a laptop drifts outside a virtual “fence”, its contents can be
remotely ‘wiped’ (i.e. made unusable) through cloud-based interfaces.
Much like developing countries, small businesses represent
another huge opportunity for cloud computing. All of a sudden,
small businesses can exploit high-end applications like ERP software
or business analytics that were hitherto unavailable to them. While it
can be argued that some of the more involved features of such
applications might not be available on their cloud-based counterparts,
such omissions will matter very little for their intended customers
[49].
Mashups represent another opportunity in cloud computing. In
web development, a mashup is a web page or application that
combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to
create a new service in originally unintended ways. An example of a
mashup is the use of cartographic data to add location information to
real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that
was not originally provided by either source. The new type of mashup
that we are beginning to see combines different cloud computing
services and integrates them into a single service or application.
Amazon's GrepTheWeb is a good example for cloud computing service
compositions within the domain of a single provider.
In an age where businesses are looking to burnish their ‘green’
credentials, cloud computing appeals to large IT infrastructures that
want to reduce their carbon footprint. According to a Forrester survey,
over 41 percent of people in the IT departments believe energy
efficiency and equipment recycling are important factors that need to
be considered. In the same survey, 65 percent believed reduction of
energy related operating costs as the driving factor for implementing
Green IT [18]. Moving to the cloud will allow organizations to not only
reduce their IT infrastructure, but, since it is much cheaper to
transport computing services than energy, it will also represent a
smarter use of energy.
In his much-heralded book, The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton
Christensen pointed to disruptive technologies as innovations that
upset the existing order of things in a particular industry [12]. Such
disruptive technologies are usually lower-functionality innovations
that appeal to customers who are not served by the current industry,
but which quickly leapfrog the market incumbents in terms of
functionality, innovation and price to upend the latter. Cloud
computing today shows all the characteristics of a disruptive
technology. We believe that many of the innovative services that
will be developed on the cloud – such as the education applications
being developed for Ethiopian schools – will soon make many cloud
computing applications functionally richer than their in-house
counterparts.
5.4. Threats
One of the biggest threats to cloud computing is the possibility of
backlash from entrenched incumbents. While we believe that many
forward-looking organizations will see cloud computing as an
opportunity to migrate to better computing practices that open up
exciting opportunities for the in-house IT staff, there will probably be
many other IT departments will view it as a threat to their corporate IT
culture (in terms of data security, IT audit policies, etc.) or just in
terms of job security. Although small businesses have been quick to
adapt and even welcome cloud computing, larger corporate customers
have voiced a plethora of concerns about handing over their
operations to another company. Another legitimate concern has
centered on cloud providers going bankrupt, especially in a shrinking
economy. Yet another concern is security — in an ongoing survey
conducted by the research firm IDC, almost 75 percent of IT executives
and CIOs report that security is their primary concern, followed by
performance and reliability [56]. The cloud computing industry
continues to make rapid strides in all these areas, but it will still be
interesting to see how all these threats play out over the next few
years in this nascent industry.
Several concerns have centered on the lack of standards. The cloud
has been described as “a trap” by GNU creator and Free Software
Foundation founder Richard Stallman — one where companies like
Google will force customers into locked, proprietary systems that will
gradually cost more and more over time. It is therefore encouraging to
note that the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO)
technical committee for information technology has just announced
the formation of a new Subcommittee on Distributed Application
Platforms and Services (DAPS) that includes working a Study Group
for standardization of cloud computing, with the goal of pursuing
“active liaison and collaboration with all appropriate bodies…to
ensure the development and deployment of interoperable distributed
application platform and services standards in relevant areas.” More
informally, industry professionals have coalesced to form several
bodies like the Open Web Foundation (formed in 2008) that promote
the development and protection of open, non-proprietary specifications
for web technologies. Anticipating the backlash against
proprietary cloud computing platforms, cloud computing providers
are also proactively promoting standards. The recent formation of
EuroCloud (in 2009), backed by more than 30 leading cloud
computing vendors, to promote the development of standards in
cloud computing across the EU that coordinate with local issues at the
national level of individual countries is a welcome step. Even
individual providers have promoted standards — for example, Google
has formed the Data Liberation Front, an engineering team within
Google whose goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in
and out of Google products [55]; and Microsoft has recently filed a
patent for a method that promises to streamline the process of
moving from one cloud to another, and in many cases completely
automate the process [13].
Perhaps the biggest factor that will impede the adoption of the
cloud computing paradigm is regulation at the local, national, and
international level. Regulation can range from data privacy and data
access to audit requirements and data location requirements. When
corporate data are moved to the cloud, regulations such as Sarbanes-
Oxley and the Health and Human Services Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) with their defined
requirements for physical data audit will come into play. Such and
other requirements at the local, national and international level (e.g.
many nations have laws requiring SaaS providers to keep customer
data and copyrighted material within national boundaries) might
negate many the benefits of cloud computing [14]. Regulation as an
issue that is important enough to warrant a separate discussion in
itself, and Section 7 is devoted to that discussion.
6. Stakeholders in cloud computing
In a traditional computing setup, the main stakeholders are the
providers and consumers: the consumers use, own, maintain, and
upgrade the systems while the providers deal with the sale,
installation, licensing, consulting and maintenance of the technology
involved. Cloud computing changes the roles of the traditional
stakeholders and adds new ones. These stakeholders include not
only the providers and the recipients of the service, but also, due to
182 S. Marston et al. / Decision Support Systems 51 (2011) 176–189