Building a Knowledge Base for Guiding Users through the Cloud Life Cycle

Cloud Computing is still a hype to provide IT services as customers demand. Especially small and medium size businesses can benefit of this new trend because of the flexibility Cloud Computing provides for the consumption of its services. Nevertheless the step into the cloud must be carefully prepared and setup to ensure a successful usage and an appropriate return on investment. Currently the lack of experience with cloud projects and the uncertainty of its predestined application areas are detaining companies to use cloud computing services. No best practices, rules and use cases are in place yet to help to convince potential users to go their way to the cloud. With the CLiCk project the authors therefore propose a personalized webbased platform for Small and Medium Enterprises to support them over an entire Cloud Life Cycle.