Cloud migration: Planning guidelines and execution framework

Abstract

Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular because it offers valuable benefits, such as on-demand services, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, measured service, etc. However, recent studies indicate that many enterprises still hesitate to adopt cloud services due to various security concerns and implementation obstacles. Particularly, there is little research devoted to exploring the influences on cloud migration execution. To bridge this gap, our study derived some comprehensive cloud migration execution influences by interview approach, based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theory. We posit that system configuration (the technological aspect, which consists of complexity and compatibility), organizational fit (the organizational aspect, which consists of member reflection and operation process), and external support (the environmental aspect, which affects the migration execution of cloud computing). The findings in this paper can help enterprises facilitate various cloud migration activities, achieve their goals of migrating applicable legacy applications to the cloud environment, and realize the benefits provided by the cloud computing paradigm.