Organisational sustainability modelling - An emerging service and analytics model for evaluating Cloud Computing adoption with two case studies

Cloud computing is an emerging technology which promises to bring with it great benefits to all types of computing activities including business support. However, the full commitment to Cloud computing necessary to gain the full benefit is a major project for any organisation, since it necessitates adoption of new business processes and attitudes to computing services in addition to the immediately obvious systems changes. Hence the evaluation of a Cloud computing project needs to consider the balance of benefits and risks to the organisation in the full context of the environment in which it operates; it is not sufficient or appropriate to examine technical considerations alone. In this paper we consider the application of CAPM, a well established approach used for the analysis of risks and benefits of commercial projects to Cloud adoption projects and propose a revised and improved technique, OSM. To support the validity of OSM, two full case studies are presented. In the first we describe an application of the approach to the iSolutions Group at University of Southampton, which focuses on evaluations of Cloud Computing service improvement. We then illustrate the use of OSM for measuring learning satisfaction of two cohort groups at the University of Greenwich. The results confirm the advantages of using OSM. We conclude that OSM can analyse the risk and return status of Cloud Computing services and help organisations that adopt Cloud Computing to evaluate and review their Cloud Computing projects and services. OSM is an emerging service and analytics model supported by several case studies.