As discussed earlier in the previous section, the drawbacks present the indisputable fact that there are significant barriers to the widespread adoption of cloud computing. In addition to the obvious disadvantages, there are other challenges to cloud computing on the horizon. Further issues related to the evolution of cloud computing fall into the following groups:
2.6.1 Economic concerns
For individual users and organisations, economic issues have an extremely vital effect upon their decision whether or not to adopt cloud computing (Reese, 2009: 13). The preliminary capital investment is the first point that consumers need to consider. Some enterprises may already have their own IT assets, and hence they stress this matter in particular. Moreover, ongoing costs must be involved in the consideration of cloud adoption. For service providers, in order to attract many customers and increase cloud adoption rates, a reasonable pricing structure is relatively important, especially for the current, difficult economic climate (Leavitt, 2009).
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2.6.2 Business model concerns
Before the shift to computing in the cloud, companies must decide upon updates to their business models and how cloud computing can help them make money (Miller, 2008). Obviously, innovative business models will contribute to companies adopting cloud computing (Tsai, 2009; Weinhardt et al., 2009). Moreover, another significant requirement for firms is selection of cloud services that are fit for purpose. For instance, one benefit of SaaS is to enable companies to expand their businesses appropriately (Melvin B. Greer, 2009).
2.6.3 Security concerns
As we know, in today’s society, the privacy of personal information and the confidentiality of business and governmental information are always an important issue, particularly as new technologies are developing. As Leavitt (2009) noted in his reviews of cloud computing research, most people worry about security. Generally speaking, the security issues relate to technological changes, data regulations, compliance, policy making and law making. Additionally, of course, service users, service providers and governments should share responsibility for the improvement of cloud security. Service vendors, on their part, have to engage in enhancing the algorithm of data encryption, in order to ensure that data, network and host are secure (Reese, 2009: 100).
Service users should also require more vigilance, in the face of potential security risks. IT departments are usually wary of data control, particularly if they outsource their data centres to cloud service providers. This is mainly because the cloud platform on which their data is hosted may be located anywhere around the world
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and none of that organisation’s staff works there (Leavitt, 2009). This means they are unable to see or touch the equipment, to say nothing of governing their data. In most cases, solutions to security problems do not lie in security technologies but in regulatory and standards compliance (Reese, 2009: 103).
On the other hand, because of the obligation that cloud service providers must guarantee the quality of their services, better and clearer policies and practices would be helpful for consumers in assessing potential security risks they face (Hewitt, 2008; Fenu and Surcis, 2009; Melvin B. Greer, 2009: 42). However, sometimes, the potential risks regarding privacy and confidentiality may not be solved by changes in policies and practices. The government should appropriately change the existing laws or make new laws (Melvin B. Greer, 2009: 42).
2.6.4 Technical concerns
The key to speeding up diffusion of cloud computing is in the maturation of cloud technologies. As mentioned in the previous section, the speed of broadband and performance of web-based applications should be improved. In addition, for cloud computing to mature, it also requires interoperability to address the problems associated with dependencies and standardisation (Fried, 2009; Tsai, 2009). Ideally, consumers should have the ability to bring cloud applications back to their own information systems or move them from one cloud vendor to another offering lower costs or a greater range of cloud services (Grossman, 2009). However, so far, current cloud computing platforms have no standardisation of application program interfaces and platform technologies (Melvin B. Greer, 2009: 163). This being the case, enterprises have to entirely depend on the support of specific cloud providers. If organisations intended to move the existing systems to another vendor, this would
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oblige them to spend extra money on reforming systems. As a result, recently, there has been an online document dedicated to fulfilling interoperability. It clearly points out the following six principles of an ―Open Cloud‖ on which technical suppliers and communities should collaborate ("Open Cloud Manifesto", 2009):
1. Open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards are necessary for cloud providers to tackle the barriers to adoption of cloud computing.
2. To avoid monopolising the cloud computing industry. Cloud providers must let customers have choice of different vendors, instead of locking them into particular platforms.
3. Cloud providers have to follow the existing standards, but not duplicate or reinvent them.
4. The judicious and pragmatic consideration of the creation of new standards as needed is necessary.
5. All community efforts associated with the open cloud should mainly depend on customer needs and should completely satisfy real customer requirements. 6. To avoid conflicts and overlaps, cloud-computing standards organisations,
advocacy groups, and communities should collaborate and coordinate.
2.6.5 Reliability concerns
Due to the fact that reliability has a great impact on cloud adoption, consumers should take care of the two key issues related to transparency and service quality. First of all, transparency means that the capabilities of cloud services must be audited by third parties (Leavitt, 2009). To achieve the goal, service vendors must provide reliable systems to ensure that customers can check who has access to their data and keep unauthorized personnel from retrieving information (Vile and Liddle, 2009:
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162). On the other hand, Leavitt (2009) points out the problem that vendors cannot always offer round-the-clock cloud services. This leads to the issue of reliability that consumers are very concerned about. To address this problem, vendors must establish a sound operating environment for their cloud services. A sound environment reflects how good the disaster recovery plan of the service provider is and whether its cloud service is indeed reliable (Reese, 2009).
2.6.6 Staff expertise concerns
As always, employees working in the IT environment have to address various challenges, in the face of innovation (Hutchinson et al., 2009). Therefore, a lack of relevant IT professionals in organisations presents a current barrier to cloud adoption (Tsai, 2009). Technology suppliers and service providers should be responsible for provisioning cloud training activities, such as consultant services, technical seminars and training courses. Furthermore, the provision of development and testing tools for adoption of cloud computing is also important; in particular, these help developers create cloud applications rapidly (Hutchinson et al., 2009).
2.6.7 Political concerns
If cloud computing can bring great benefits to business and our lives, we may need to consider whether the government should shoulder responsibility for adding impetus to the evolution of cloud computing. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, declared that “The digital revolution is changing all our lives
beyond recognition and today we shall set out how Britain must change with it”
(Brown, 2009). Along these lines, the UK government will invest in information and communications industries and aim for accelerated digital development. From this
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example, it is apparent that government support affects the innovation of technology.