Competing on the Cloud: A Review and Synthesis of Potential Benefits and Possible Pitfalls

Abstract

Cloud computing is currently receiving unprecedented levels of attention despite the fact that opinion on the prospects for successful cloud adoption is both conflicting and divided. In this article, we examine the potential benefits and limitations of cloud adoption from the perspective of a client firm’s competitive priorities, identifying business motivators for each priority, mechanisms deployed in pursuing each priority, and the possible costs impacts and potential returns impacts of mechanism deployment in the context of each priority. This research is intended to add to the growing body of available business value-focused cloud computing studies and provides an additional vantage point for further conceptual and empirical work.

Keywords:

• cloud computing
• competitive priorities
• benefits
• limitations
• costs
• returns
• impacts
• motivators
• mechanisms

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the three anonymous reviewers and the Editor for valuable criticisms and suggestions that helped enhance this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ram Pakath

Ramakrishnan (Ram) Pakath is professor of Finance and Quantitative Methods, at the C. M. Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky, USA. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University (India), a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from University of Madras (India), a Master’s Degree in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and a Doctorate in Management (MIS) from Purdue University. Ram’s current research interests lie in the areas of evolutionary computation and data mining. Ram’s research articles have appeared in such refereed forums as Behaviour and Information Technology; Computational Economics; Decision Sciences; Decision Support Systems; European Journal of Operational Research; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics; Information and Management; Information Systems Research; Journal of Computer Information Systems; Journal of Electronic Commerce Research; and Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. He is author of the book Business Support Systems: An Introduction, published by Copley. Ram has contributed refereed material to the following books: Cases on Information Technology Management in Modern Organizations; Decision Support Systems: A Knowledge-Based Approach; Handbook on Decision Support Systems 1—Basic Themes; Handbook of Industrial Engineering; Management Impacts of Information Technology: Perspectives on Organizational Change and Growth; Multimedia Technology and Applications; Security, Trust, and Regulatory Aspects of Cloud Computing in Business Environments; and Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence. He also has several invited/contributed conference presentations and refereed conference proceedings to his credit. He is a Senior Editor of Decision Support Systems and an Editorial Review Board Member of Journal of End User Computing, Management, MIS Quarterly—Special Issue on Transformational Issues of Big Data and Analytics in Networked Business, and The Open Artificial Intelligence Journal. His research has been funded by IBM, Ashland Oil, the C. M. Gatton College of Business and Economics, the University of Kentucky, and the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation.