Stepping into the clouds : enabling companies to adapt their capabilities to cloud computing to succeed under uncertain conditions
Abstract
Recent technologies have changed the way companies acquire and use computing
resources. Companies have to adapt their capabilities, which combine business
processes, skills, etc., to exploit the opportunities presented by these technologies whilst
avoiding adverse effects. The latter part is, however, becoming increasingly difficult due
to the uncertain long-term impact recent technologies have. This thesis argues that
companies are required to adapt their capabilities in a way that increases the company’s
resilience so that they are robust yet flexible enough to succeed under uncertain
conditions.
By focusing on cloud computing as one recent technology, this thesis first identifies the
underlying processes of adapting capabilities to cloud computing by investigating how
software vendors migrated their products into the cloud. The results allow the definition
of viewpoints that influence the adaptation of capabilities to cloud computing.
Furthermore, the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) is applied to one
software vendor after the migration of their product into the cloud. FRAM enables the
analysis of ‘performance variabilities’ that need to be dampened to increase the resilience
of systems. The results show that FRAM appropriately informs steps to increase and
measure resilience when migrating products into the cloud.
The final part develops cFRAM which extends FRAM through the viewpoints to enable
the analysis of capabilities within FRAM. The goal of cFRAM is to enable companies to
(1) identify existing capabilities, (2) investigate the impact of cloud computing on them,
and (3) inform steps to adapt them to cloud computing whilst dampening performance
variabilities. The results of the cFRAM evaluation study are unequivocal and show
cFRAM is a novel method that achieves its goal of enabling companies to adapt their
capabilities to cloud computing in a way that increases the company’s resilience. cFRAM
can be easily adapted to other technologies like smartphones by changing the viewpoints.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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