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benefits and limitations of cloud computing adoption, service models and deployment models of cloud computing is carried out. Section 4 summarizes and ...
International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 14 (2016) pp 8145-8148 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com

Factors Affecting the Cloud Computing Technology adoption among Public Organizations Muhammad Imran Bin MdYusof School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), 11800, Penang, Malaysia Ahmad Suhaimi Baharudin School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), 11800, Penang, Malaysia Kamal Karkonasasi School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), 11800, Penang, Malaysia, Corresponding Author be beneficial for their organizations [2]. According to Cellary and Strykow (2009), public sectors should take advantage of those improved conditions for development and deployment of e-government solutions. A way to achieve this goal is by adopting new architectures such as cloud computing and service-oriented architecture. Cloud computing covers uniformly the whole country with egovernment solutions, independently of divergence of local administrative units‟ readiness for offering e-services. Moreover, cloud computing permits to considerably cut costs of IT adoption in the public sector which are often one of the main obstacles for e-government solutions deployment. Furthermore, cloud computing cuts down costs and accelerates cost reduction benefit. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces cloud computing. The purpose of this section is to explain what cloud computing really is and from what it is consisted of. After that, a discussion has been done on the benefits and limitations of cloud computing adoption, service models and deployment models of cloud computing is carried out. Section 4 summarizes and discusses a case study within a government organization that already implemented cloud computing technology. The purpose of this section is to highlight the benefits and limitations that derived from the migration of government services to the cloud. The paper closes with conclusion and future research.

AbstractAmid the rapid evolution of Information Communication Technology (ICT) field, governments, organizations and businesses are looking for solutions to improve their services and integrate their IT infrastructures. In recent years, advanced technologies have been evolved to address integration problems in the computing infrastructure. Recent technological trends such as cloud computing emerge to support this effort. Thus, our research focuses on the area of cloud computing in conjunction with e-government environment. This study is a brief investigation of the factors that affecting the cloud computing technology adoption among public organizations. Keywords: Cloud Computing Technology adoption, Public Organization, Information Communication Technology (ICT), e-government environment

INTRODUCTION The emergence of Information Technology (IT) is being increasingly used as a key tool to automate business processes at various level of organization. In spite of this, current information systems within government organizations have not been developed in a coordinated way. As a result, the majority of organizations‟ IT infrastructures consist of independent and sometimes diverse solutions that are often unable to meet the needs of the organization. Thus, a variety of integration problems has been derived from this effect while applications cannot collaborate and different IT solutions cannot be integrated together. The world-wide economic recession and the shrinking financial plan of IT projects have directed to the necessity of development of integrated information systems at a lower cost. Nowadays, the growing phenomenon of cloud computing technology purposes to transform the old way of computing by offering both software applications and hardware resources as a service [1]. Thus, government agencies, businesses and individuals can either provide or use services within an unlimited computing infrastructure environment (storage, CPU power and etc.). Cloud computing is getting the public sector by storm as IT professionals get more confidence in this developing technology and realize the many ways it can

INTRODUCING CLOUD COMPUTING As a concept, cloud computing is not entirely new. It is similar to the time-sharing systems of the 1960s [3] [4], and the network computing and grid computing of the 1990s. Cloud computing provides a pool of highly scalable and easily accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and services) that are capable of hosting end-user applications exploited in a pay-as-you-go model [5]. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.) Datacenters in which these services are hosted are sets of interconnected servers which generate huge computing power and virtualized environment that allows dynamically the deployment of applications at run-time. Cloud computing involves the following three basic components:

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Clients: Clients and their needs remain the same as in a common Local Area Network (LAN). They may use desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers or other mobile devices to access internet data or services [6]. Datacenter: The datacenter consists of set of servers where the requested applications are hosted. The growing trend in IT like servers virtualization facilitates multiple virtual servers to run on one physical server. The number of virtual servers that can run on a physical server depends on its size and speed and on the nature of the running applications on the virtual server [6]. Distributed servers: The structure of cloud computing permits cloud providers to host physical servers in disparate geographical locations without affecting the interaction of cloud end-users. This feature increases the flexibility and security options presented by service provider. In case that a problem happens in a datacenter, a service will be still accessible through alternative distributed server. Furthermore, in case that cloud needs more hardware devices to support its workload, it is not essential to attach more servers onto the primary datacenter. In fact, the requisite resources can be set up at another group of distributed servers to be automatically embedded into the cloud [6].

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deploying web applications and services. Developers, project managers, and testers are not required to download or even install any development software on their local computers. The capability delivered to the consumer is supported using programming languages and tools from the provider [9]. Software as a Service: The cloud delivers complete applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) over the Internet. Consequently, a client only needs to purchase an access to these applications instead of purchasing licenses and exploiting them locally. The capability delivered to the consumer is to providing processing, storage, networks, and other essential computing resources where the consumer is able to set up and run arbitrary software, which can contain operating systems and applications [9].

DEPLOYMENT MODEL Each organization chooses a deployment model for a cloud computing solution based on their specific business, operational, and technical requirements. There are four primary cloud deployment models: private cloud, community cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. In the private cloud, the cloud infrastructure is functioned exclusively for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may be on premise or off premise. As for the community cloud, it refers to cloud computing environment that the infrastructure is shared among several organizations and supports a particular community that has shared concerns. It may be organized by the organizations or a third party and may be on premise or off premise. Whereas, for public cloud, the infrastructure is owned by a cloud vendor, and is accessible to the general public or a large industry group. Finally, hybrid cloud is a type of cloud infrastructure which is a combination of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that stay exclusive entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that allows data and application portability [10].

CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICE MODEL Cloud computing is a general term for anything that includes distributing hosted services over the Internet [7]. These services are generally divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). A cloud service has three different characteristics that distinguish it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, usually by the minute or the hour. Additionally, it is elastic. As a result, a user can have as much as service they need at any given time and the service is completely managed by the provider. Consequently, the consumer needs nothing unless a personal computer and Internet access [8]. The three service models of cloud computing are described as follow: The main objectives are: a) Infrastructure as a Service: The cloud brings computer infrastructure as a service. The infrastructure can contain servers, storage space, network equipment and system software like operating systems and database systems. The infrastructure is provided in the form of virtual environment. The applications are accessible from different client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser. From the client‟s perspective, it looks and operates precisely like standard infrastructure, while in fact it is one of many virtual environments hosted simultaneously on the same physical infrastructure resources [9]. b) Platform as a Service: The cloud brings application development environment. It supports the full life cycle of designing, implementing, testing, and

BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING ADOPTION In many senses, the primary advantages the cloud brings are to do with cost and efficiency, which are closely intertwined. Cloud computing holds a number of advantages for the government. These include “reduced cost, increased storage, higher levels of automation, increased flexibility, and higher levels of employee mobility.”). Table 1 and 2 summarize the extracted benefits and limitation of cloud computing adoption in public organizations in broad-spectrum implementation.

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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 14 (2016) pp 8145-8148 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com Table 1: Benefits of cloud computing adoption [11]

Integration Organizations may need to adopt several service suppliers for different reasons. As a result, they need to integrate applications and data on several public clouds. Cost The assured cost advantages of cloud computing are certain to be eroded. The necessity to keep on premises backup or secondary cloud services in order to avoid the impact of infrequent outages definitely increases the cost. Moreover, The necessity to increase communication bandwidth to keep a preferred performance level increases the cost. Environment Transferring data center operations from corporations‟ premises to the clouds are not decreasing the global power consumption or the CO2 emission.

Benefits Explanation Dynamic load of The customers dynamically state their resources resource requests and the cloud computing provider fulfils their requirements. Professional The infrastructures are managed by a maintenance and cloud computing supplier that is liable for administration employing suitable staff. Timely software A cloud computing supplier constantly be updates careful for new software updates and patches and applies them instantly. Higher security Professional workforce in cloud computing providers are capable of ensuring higher security of hardware and software. Higher performance Cloud computing provider can provide higher performance scalable to user‟s changing requirements. Shift from There is a shift from a single high investment cost to investment cost to seasonal operational operational costs costs. Dissemination of Cloud computing helps the spreading of good practices modern software and more commonly – worthy organizational and managerial practices – in all the units spread over a country.

CLOUD COMPUTING IN E-GOVERNMENT (CASE STUDY) Although governments have been traditionally slow adopters of new technology, cloud computing has become a really attractive mean of efficient and cost-effective service delivery to them across the word. The authors attempt to strengthen the issue of cloud computing usage in an E-Government perspective by a case study. The case study summarized in this section shows that government organizations like City of Miami (United States of America) adopted cloud computing solutions to improve their service delivery and also to reduce their IT costs. The city of Miami is moving citizen services to the cloud with the launch of Miami 311, an online application that lets residents to track service requests and view the status of nonemergency events in the metropolitan area. Miami residents can dial 311 to report issues such as potholes, streetlight outages or missed trash pickup and later log onto the Miami 311 site to monitor the progress of the requested resolution. Moreover, Miami 311 gives city managers better visibility into what is happening in their districts, allowing them to respond to specific problem areas. The Miami 311 is developed in eight days by two developers. The department was able to achieve a 75 percent reduction in development costs by turning to the cloud. To reduce operational costs and Web development time, the Miami 311 was built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform [12].

Table 2: Limitation of cloud computing adoption [4] Limitations Explanation Outage An outage may happen temporary and permanent. A permanent outage happens when a cloud service supplier exits the business. Temporary outage of cloud computing services may occur several times a year, and each time it may stay a few hours or approximately one complete day or even longer. Security 100% security in cloud is not possible. Experienced hackers can break into cloud like any computer system. A cloud may attract the hackers like “honey pot”. Misfortunes may occur throughout physical transportation or electronic transfer of data. Untruthful staff may do immoral things to the computer system or data. Performance A main source of performance problem for cloud services is the communication time among the client computer and the Web server in the cloud. Another source of performance problem is the lack of ability for the service provider to scale up their computing infrastructure as users‟ requirements are increased further than the initial expectation. Compliance The government regulations for enterprises regarding the secure storage, privacy, and disclosure of data were written without consideration of cloud computing. As a result, it is not clear whether enterprises will violate such regulations regarding cloud computing services.

CONCLUSION Cloud computing is a novel and promising paradigm delivering IT services as computing utilities. Cloud computing enables innovation by improve the need of developers to find resources to develop, test, and make their innovations available to the public. As a result, developers can concentrate on their ideas rather than worrying about the needed resources. Evidences from literature show that the use of cloud computing has significant advantages and limitations. As a conclusion, government organizations at all levels should look at cloud computing as an emerging technology that has the potential to significantly streamline the way they use technology to deliver and improve services to public. On the

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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 14 (2016) pp 8145-8148 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com other hand, they should be cautious about disadvantages of using cloud computing. The author‟s aim of the research was to develop a roadmap that would assist organizations in leveraging cloud computing through successful adoption in public organizations. Using the results from literature review, the roadmap for enabling successful adoption of cloud computing will be developed. This research is still in its initial stages and it can be considered as a research in progress. Thus, based on the literature review, author is planning to formulate research questions and develop a conceptual model. The nature of the research questions and the model itself will guide author to select a suitable research methodology that will be used to test the model. Appropriate data collection methods will be employed to collect data. Then, the data analysis will be carried out to test the research model.

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[12] ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to acknowledge UniversitiSains Malaysia (USM) as this research has been supported from the Short Term Research Grant [Account Number:304/PKOMP/6312103] and from the Research University Grant (RUI) [Account Number: 1001/PKOMP/811251] from the UniversitiSains Malaysia.

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