Stepping into the clouds : enabling companies to adapt their capabilities to cloud computing to succeed under uncertain conditions
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Recent technologies have changed the way companies acquire and use computing \nresources. Companies have to adapt their capabilities, which combine business \nprocesses, skills, etc., to exploit the opportunities presented by these technologies whilst \navoiding adverse effects. The latter part is, however, becoming increasingly difficult due \nto the uncertain long-term impact recent technologies have. This thesis argues that \ncompanies are required to adapt their capabilities in a way that increases the company’s \nresilience so that they are robust yet flexible enough to succeed under uncertain \nconditions. \n \nBy focusing on cloud computing as one recent technology, this thesis first identifies the \nunderlying processes of adapting capabilities to cloud computing by investigating how \nsoftware vendors migrated their products into the cloud. The results allow the definition \nof viewpoints that influence the adaptation of capabilities to cloud computing. \n \nFurthermore, the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) is applied to one \nsoftware vendor after the migration of their product into the cloud. FRAM enables the \nanalysis of ‘performance variabilities’ that need to be dampened to increase the resilience \nof systems. The results show that FRAM appropriately informs steps to increase and \nmeasure resilience when migrating products into the cloud. \n \nThe final part develops cFRAM which extends FRAM through the viewpoints to enable \nthe analysis of capabilities within FRAM. The goal of cFRAM is to enable companies to \n(1) identify existing capabilities, (2) investigate the impact of cloud computing on them, \nand (3) inform steps to adapt them to cloud computing whilst dampening performance \nvariabilities. The results of the cFRAM evaluation study are unequivocal and show \ncFRAM is a novel method that achieves its goal of enabling companies to adapt their \ncapabilities to cloud computing in a way that increases the company’s resilience. cFRAM \ncan be easily adapted to other technologies like smartphones by changing the viewpoints.
Author: Marc Werfs
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2886396621