Authors:
Katie Wood
and
Kevan Buckley
Affiliation:
Wolverhampton University, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Cloud Computing (CC), Security, Risk Management, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Cloud Service Providers (CSP).
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Cloud Computing
;
Cloud Risk, Challenges, and Governance
;
Cloud Scenarios
;
Fundamentals
Abstract:
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have become a primary target audience for Cloud Service Providers
(CSP), such as Amazon and Microsoft to promote their cloud offering. CSP strong marketing campaigns of
‘promised’ benefits from using their clouds is an attractive offer for SMEs especially where resources are
limited and they wish to become more agile and reduce IT costing to be competitive with larger rivals. This
paper argues that once SMEs remove the hype surrounding the concept of cloud computing (CC), the reality
of significant benefits do not materialize for SMEs. This paper demonstrates, through working with SMEs
considering the options of CC that the challenges and risks associated with cloud might actually hinder the
business, rather than providing any real long term value.