Cloud Computing - Adoption

DRIVERS OF CLOUD COMPUTING ADOPTION

Eight attributes of cloud computing can be seen as drivers for the adoption of cloud computing. The attributes are availability, collaboration, elasticity, lower infrastructure costs, mobility, risk reduction, scalability, and virtualization. Table 1 provides how these attributes can serve as drivers for cloud computing adoption.

Table 1: Cloud Computing Drivers 

Attribute	Why It Can Draw an Organization Toward Cloud Computing
Availability	Users have the ability to access their resources at any time through a standard internet connection.
Collaboration	Users begin to see the cloud as a way to work simultaneously on common data and information.
Elasticity	The provider transparently manages a user’s resource utilization based on dynamically changing needs.
Lower Infrastructure Costs	The pay-per-usage model allows an organization to only pay for the resources they need with basically no investment in the physical resources available in the cloud. There are no infra-structure maintenance or upgrade costs.
Mobility	Users have the ability to access data and applications from around the globe.
Risk Reduction	Organizations can use the cloud to test ideas and concepts before making major investments in technology.
Scalability	Users have access to a large amount of resources that scale based on their demand.
Virtualization	Each user has a single view of the available resources, independently of how they are arranged in terms of physical devices. Therefore, there is potential from a provider perspective to serve a greater number of users with fewer physical resources.

Cloud Computing Adoption Barriers 

Some key organizational concerns can act as barriers to the adoption of cloud computing. These concerns are interoperability, latency, platform or language constraints, regulations, reliability, resource control, and security (see Table 2).

Table 2: Cloud Computing Barriers

Concern	Why It Can Act as a Barrier to Cloud Computing Adoption
Interoperability	A universal set of standards and/or interfaces have not yet been defined, resulting in a significant risk of vendor lock-in.
Latency	All access to the cloud is done via the internet, introducing latency into every communication between the user and the provider.
Platform or Language Constraints	Some cloud providers support specific platforms and languages only.
Regulations	There are concerns in the cloud computing community over jurisdiction, data protection, fair information practices, and international data transfer—mainly for organizations that manage sensitive data.
Reliability	Many existing cloud infrastructures leverage commodity hard-ware that is known to fail unexpectedly.
Resource Control	The amount of control that the user has over the cloud provider and its resources varies greatly between providers.
Security	The main concern is data privacy: users do not have control or knowledge of where their data is being stored.

Source: Lewis, Grace (2010), "Basics About Cloud Computing", Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Available at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/assets/whitepapers/Cloudcomputingbasics.pdf, Accessed: August 14, 2012