Holistic Investment Framework for Cloud Computing
Marc Rabaey · IGI Global eBooks · 2012
Cloud computing is a new technology which puts whole or partial parts of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and services in a virtualized environment inside and/or outside the traditional IT center perimeter. It touches every level of the IT architecture and thus has a big influence on the way the internal and external users via their business processes are interacting with this architecture. Security is a big issue in this context and a lot of business and IT people are reluctant to move to the Cloud. Besides the security, business and architectural issues may increase the risks and create more uncertainties for these kinds of projects. For this reason, the chapter presents an investment framework, which takes into account the global, the business, the IT and the operational strategies, so that cloud computing projects have more chance to succeed. The need for flexibility in the investments is addressed by the real option valuation, which is placed in the context of the chapter’s holistic investment framework for cloud computing.