Nattakarn Phaphoom

Does cloud computing deliver the promised benefits for IT industry?

Cloud computing has captured the attention of both the researchers and practitioners alike. Companies and other cloud users are expecting to receive significant benefits from the new cloud based technologies. To what extent these benefits materialize for enterprise IT is not clearly understood. In this paper, we examine the perceived benefits of cloud computing from the cloud users' perspectives. Cloud users include users of SaaS/PaaS/IaaS, ranging from end-users, to service developers and system administrators. Using content analysis techniques, we examine one of the major discussion forums of cloud computing. Rather than offering a yes/no answer to the question posed, we offer five empirically drawn insights on the perceived benefits of cloud computing. It is proposed that the empirical insights gained are valuable to both researchers and practitioners. The value lies in a more holistic view on the promised benefits' landscape.

Towards a Conceptual Framework for Assessing the Benefits of Cloud Computing

Foundations and Technological Landscape of Cloud Computing

The cloud computing paradigm has brought the benefits of utility computing to a global scale. It has gained paramount attention in recent years. Companies are seriously considering to adopt this new paradigm and expecting to receive significant benefits. In fact, the concept of cloud computing is not a revolution in terms of technology; it has been established based on the solid ground of virtualization, distributed system, and web services. To comprehend cloud computing, its foundations and technological landscape need to be adequately understood. This paper provides a comprehensive review on the building blocks of cloud computing and relevant technological aspects. It focuses on four key areas including architecture, virtualization, data management, and security issues.

Affordable and Energy-Efficient Cloud Computing Clusters: The Bolzano Raspberry Pi Cloud Cluster Experiment

We present our ongoing work building a Raspberry Pi cluster consisting of 300 nodes. The unique characteristics of this single board computer pose several challenges, but also offer a number of interesting opportunities. On the one hand, a single Raspberry Pi can be purchased cheaply and has a low power consumption, which makes it possible to create an affordable and energy-efficient cluster. On the other hand, it lacks in computing power, which makes it difficult to run computationally intensive software on it. Nevertheless, by combining a large number of Raspberries into a cluster, this drawback can be (partially) offset. Here we report on the first important steps of creating our cluster: how to set up and configure the hardware and the system software, and how to monitor and maintain the system. We also discuss potential use cases for our cluster, the two most important being an inexpensive and green test bed for cloud computing research and a robust and mobile data center for operating in adverse environments.

Cloud computing implementation explained: A tale of two SMEs

A survey study on major technical barriers affecting the decision to adopt cloud services

In the context of cloud computing, risks associated with underlying technologies, risks involving service models and outsourcing, and enterprise readiness have been recognized as potential barriers for the adoption. To accelerate cloud adoption, the concrete barriers negatively influencing the adoption decision need to be identified. Our study aims at understanding the impact of technical and security-related barriers on the organizational decision to adopt the cloud. We analyzed data collected through a web survey of 352 individuals working for enterprises consisting of decision makers as well as employees from other levels within an organization. The comparison of adopter and non-adopter sample reveals three potential adoption inhibitor, security, data privacy, and portability. The result from our logistic regression analysis confirms the criticality of the security concern, which results in an up to 26-fold increase in the non-adoption likelihood. Our study underlines the importance of the technical and security perspectives for research investigating the adoption of technology.