Towards the Development of a Framework to Increase ...

Towards the Development of a Framework to Increase the Cloud Computing Readiness of Financial Institutions in South Africa Akande Akinlolu Olumide

Jean-Paul Van Belle

Department of Information Systems University of Cape Town Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa [email protected]

Department of Information Systems University of Cape Town Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa [email protected]

Abstract—Cloud Computing (CC) offers benefits such as scalability, ubiquity, flexibility, and its deployment is quick and easy [12]. CC also helps organizations remove the cost of buying, installing, maintaining and upgrading hardware. Although CC offers a lot of benefits, issues such as security, uncertainty about availability of data, fear of vendor/data lock in, uncertainty about data confidentiality, lack of clarity and consistent opinion as to the perceived risks of cloud services, Integrity issues and poor band width has slowed down the rate of its adoption. As a result, financial institutions are reluctant to adopt CC. This paper explains the different cloud deployment models and suggests suitable options for financial institutions. This paper also suggests that avoidance of CC is not the best option for financial institutions as the benefits of CC are more than its disadvantages. In order to help financial institutions increase their CC readiness, we identify the benefits and issues of CC and emphasize that readiness should be considered before adoption because it will help reduce innovation risks and lead to a more successful adoption which is attributed to a higher level of readiness [25]. Keywords—Cloud Computing; readiness; adoption; implementation; Technology-Organization-Environment; financial institutions; South Africa; organizations

I.

INTRODUCTION

Cloud computing (CC) is fast becoming a necessity for organizations to remain competitive and do their business faster with fewer resources than they would have used without CC [12]. CC helps remove the cost of buying, installing, maintaining and upgrading hardware. Other benefits of cloud computing includes scalability, ubiquity, flexibility, and its deployment is quick and easy [12]. Although CC offers so many benefits, there are some issues with CC which affects the adoption rates of financial institutions in South Africa. Some of these issues include uncertainty about availability of data, fear of vendor/data lock in, uncertainty about data confidentiality, lack of clarity and consistent opinion as to the perceived risks of cloud services, integrity issues, security issues and poor band width. Because of the issues with cloud computing and the nature of data that financial institutions store, it is important for financial institutions to properly evaluate the different cloud deployment models in order to determine which one will best

suit their requirements. As a result, what kind of cloud deployment model is best for financial institutions? Furthermore, what are the benefits and issues with CC readiness that affect financial institutions? In this work, we present the different deployment models of CC and discuss the benefits and issues of CC in order to determine the best option for financial institutions. II.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Many organizations adopt technologies without considering their level of readiness for that technology and this leads to weak implementation and sometimes failure. This, in most cases is as a result of lack of awareness and lack of a regulatory framework for CC implementation [17]. In order to avoid the problem of weak implementation and failure, there is an urgent need for researchers, both industry and academics to come up with tools which will guide organizations and improve their CC readiness level before adoption to ensure successful CC implementation. III.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

To overcome the above problem and ensure successful implementation of CC, We propose the development of a framework that organizations can use to determine their level of readiness for CC before adopting and implementing CC to ensure successful adoption and implementation. IV.

MOTIVATION AND GAPS IN LITERATURE

Most of the current research in the field of CC is focused on the adoption, diffusion, implementation and impact of CC on IT development practices [27]. Although CC has been widely embraced by different organizations, research in CC is still in their early stages. The focus of has not been on readiness which is a phase before adoption and is an essential factor in determining the success of adoption because lack of readiness has been found to account for majority of the failures in technology adoption by organizations [27]. Table 1 shows the status of current CC research from organization as well as technical stand point. Table 1 reveals that a lot of research has been conducted on CC adoption, privacy, security and trust

111

issues in CC, and service oriented design and development. Table 1 also shows that very little research has been conducted on Analytics (Business Intelligence) using cloud and reliability of cloud while few researches has focused on social issues in CC and cloud workflow management. It is however evident from Table 1 that research focus has not been on organizational readiness of CC as most of the research has focused on the implementation and post implementation phases leaving the pre-implementation phase less researched. TABLE 1: CURRENT CLOUD COMPUTING RESEARCH ([3], PG. 240)

Topic

Current Status

Related Reference

Analytics (Business Intelligence) using Cloud

Very few

[Mircea et al. 2011]

Reliability of Cloud

Very few

[Vogels 2008]

Social Issues in Cloud computing

Few

[Kim et al. 2008; Provos et al. 2009]

Cloud Workflow Management

Few

[Liu et al. 2010; Wu et al. 2010]

Privacy, Security and Trust issues in Cloud computing

Abundance

[Anthens 2010; Carlin & Curran 2011;

Service Oriented Design and Development

Abundance

Cloud computing Adoption

VI.

CLOUD COMPUTING: AN OVERVIEW

CC is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction [7], [9]. CC is a model in which companies can access computing power and resources on the cloud and pay for services, platform, and/or infrastructure based on usage [3] [17]. CC is a type of parallel and distributed system which is made up of a collection of interconnected and virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned and presented as one or more unified computing resources based on servicelevel agreement [4]. CC can also be defined as a system, where the resources of a data center is shared using virtualization technology, which also provide elastic, on demand and instant services to its customers and charges customer usage as utility bill [16]. This is illustrated in figure 1.

Grobauer et al. 2011; Kaufman 2009]

Abundance

[Chen & Meixell 2003; Curley 2006; Elfatatry & Layzell 2004; Huhns & Singh 2005; Hirschheim et al. 2010; Perepletchikov 2008]

Figure 1: Schematic definition of cloud computing ([6], pg. 834)

[Grossman et al. 2009; Low et al. 2011;

Selecting the most suitable deployment model is an important step for financial institutions to successfully implement CC because of the sensitivity of their data and information. Another important reason is that different types of cloud require different resources and expertise. Most organizations have failed in their CC implementation due to selection of a wrong deployment model [8]. The different deployment models are discussed below.

Misra & Mondal 2010; Tuncay 2010] This research will contribute towards filling the gaps identified in literature by showing the need to achieve a high level of readiness before the adoption and implementation of CC to increase implementation success. Some of the issues that need to be considered to achieve a higher level of CC readiness will also be discussed. V.

their level of readiness and increase implementation success thereby reducing the level of innovation risk, and leading to a more successful IT/S innovation outcome [25]. This research will also enable organizations to increase their agility, mobility, and ensure faster time to market by increasing readiness level of financial institutions.

RELEVANCE TO FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Financial Institutions will benefit from the research because it will create awareness on which deployment model is best for them. It will also inform financial institutions about the barriers and enablers of CC thereby reducing the risks involved in the adoption of CC. These will help financial institutions increase

VII. DEPLOYMENT MODEL

A. Private cloud A private cloud is made up of a set of virtualized data Centers [11]. This type of CC requires organizations to have their own servers which may be managed by the organization or an appointed third party. The servers may exist on the organizations premises or on the third parties premises but they are dedicated to a particular organization [6], [30]. Because of the security concerns including data privacy and trust, Private Cloud is a preferred option for many firms [9]. This will be

112

suitable for financial institutions for security reasons and because of the sensitivity of their data and information. B. Public cloud In a public cloud infrastructure, the servers and other resources are owned by a third party service provider who makes the resources available to the general public. The server and all other resources are shared among the organizations and they are billed per usage [30]. An example of public cloud is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) [27]. In a public cloud, the user has no control over where the infrastructure is located as the infrastructure is located on the service provider’s premises [6]. C. Community cloud The cloud infrastructure is shared among several organizations within a community with certain communal goals. The infrastructures may be managed by the organizations or a third party [30]. D. Hybrid cloud In hybrid cloud, the infrastructure is made up of a combination of two or more types of cloud. It could be a combination of private cloud and community cloud, private cloud and public cloud, or community cloud and public [30]. Financial institutions can adopt this model by using the private cloud for more sensitive data and public cloud for less sensitive data. VIII. SERVICE MODEL There are three main cloud delivery models. These are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) [1] [2] [21]. A. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) SaaS allows the user to be able to use applications running on a cloud infrastructure from a provider without having to worry about the management or control of cloud infrastructures such as servers, storage, network, operating systems, storage, and other infrastructures that supports CC [30]. The service provider is solely responsible for any update or change in the application [27]. Major vendors of SaaS are Google Apps and Salesforce.com [20]. Examples of SaaS are gmail and Google docs from Google, Hotmail and Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) from Microsoft [6]. B. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) PaaS provides the consumer with the capability to create their own services and applications with the support of services, programming languages and tools supported and provided by the platform provider [30], [20]. Examples of PaaS are Application Engine from Google, Sun N1 Grid, force.com from Salesforce.com, and Microsoft Azure [6], [20]. C. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) IaaS uses virtual machine to provide consumers with storage, networks, processing power, and other important

computing resources which allow the consumer to deploy and run their applications and software [20], [30]. A good example is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service [20]. With IaaS, the user is able to monitor and control the use of the operating systems, storage, applications, and is also able to exercise a limited level of control over selected networking components. CC is also classified into private, public, community and hybrid cloud based on the deployment model [30]. IX.

READINESS

Readiness can mean different things to different people, in different contexts, and for different purposes. Readiness is the availability of needed organizational resources to adopt a technology [26]. Readiness can also be defined as the ability of an organization to successfully adopt, use, and benefit from a technology. The definitions from [26], [10] has been selected as the working definition for this research. As a result, it is important to define CC-readiness in the context of this research based on the selected working definition. In the context of this research, CC-readiness of a financial institution means the ability of the financial institution to successfully adopt, use, and benefit from CC through efficient use of available resources. In order to clearly explain what readiness means in the context of this research, readiness is shown in figure 2 as a stage before adoption. In order to ensure a successful implementation of CC and properly manage changes that arise as a result of CC, organizations need to prepare themselves and be ready before adoption and implementation because more than one-half of all unsuccessful large-scale organizational change efforts are as a result of failure to establish sufficient readiness [28]. With a good knowledge of CC and readiness, organizations will have a better chance of successfully adopting and implementing CC. Figure 2 is a diagrammatic representation of readiness in relation to adoption in the context of this research. Figure 2 shows that readiness is in the pre-implementation stage and should be determined before adoption. Once an organization decides to implement CC, the organization should determine their level of readiness for CC to determine their suitability for a successful adoption. Once the readiness level is known and the organization CC readiness in good enough, only then should the organization decide to adopt CC. Stages before and after Implementation

Pre - Implementation

Technology/ CC Availability

Readiness

Implementation

Adoption

Post - Implementation

Maintenance/Upgrades

Figure 2: Schematic representation of the differences between readiness and adoption

113

X.

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE ORGANISATIONS CLOUD COMPUTING READINESS

The lack of frameworks or methodology to guide organizations in their CC implementation makes it difficult for many organizations to successfully implement CC [22]. Before implementing CC, organizations should carefully investigate the perceived failures of CC projects and why those projects fail as part of the steps towards CC readiness [8]. Some of the issues that prevent organizations from adopting and implementing CC include uncertainty about availability, fear of vendor/data lock in, uncertainty about data confidentiality, lack of clarity and consistent opinion as to the perceived risks of cloud services, integrity issues, poor band width etc. These issues should be carefully analyzed by organizations as further steps towards CC readiness because careful analysis of these issues may help prevent problems associated with them. There are some specific issues which financial institutions need to consider before adopting CC. The following section will discuss these issues in details. The benefits, risks, and common uses of CC for financial institutions will also be discussed in the following section. XI.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

CC is not new to financial institutions. The earlier form of CC adopted by financial institutions was SaaS which was used for social media banking [24]. CC customer relationship management is another popular form of CC used by financial institutions. In order to maximize the benefits of CC, financial institutions need to select the right operating, service, and deployment models to resolve security and compliance issues. In the early stages of CC, the expected service model would be private cloud which will give complete ownership and control of customer’s sensitive data to financial institutions [23]. A. Benefits of CC to financial institutions Many financial institutions are already using CC while others are seriously considering moving into the cloud. CC offer facilities such as email, web hosting and fully managed applications which will enhance communications between financial institutions and clients [24]. CC provides financial institutions with the opportunity to outsource their IT operations and infrastructure to a third party service provider, and be able to concentrate on their business and not IT. With Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place, service delivery and availability are assured by cloud providers. CC also helps to reduce risk management costs as well as operational risk [5]. CC provides financial institutions with mobile and virtual structure which gives them opportunity to scale up or down depending on the demand from customers thereby enabling them to save on the cost of acquiring and maintaining the resources that are not needed [24]. CC also assists financial institutions to eradicate silos by replacing them with a single hub. Performance of financial institutions can be increased by CC in so many ways. Firstly, CC allows financial institutions to avoid large upfront cost and

allows them to select services and applications that they need and pay based on usage [24]. A higher level of fault tolerance, data protection, and disaster recovery can be achieved by financial institutions because the responsibility of managing CC lies with the service provider. CC can also reduce product development cycle of financial institutions because of the time it helps to save by eliminating the need for purchase, installation, and maintenance of infrastructure which saves time. This allows financial institutions to reduce their focus on IT and pay more attention to their business thereby allowing them to attend to their customers’ needs in a timely manner [24]. B. Common uses of CC by financial institutions Many financial institutions use CC for customer relationship management and Customer analytics [24]. IT and application development can also benefit financial institutions if done on CC because most financial institutions are outsourcing those services. CC helps to improve customer satisfaction because it facilitates sales, customer engagement, interactions and servicing. CC also improves customer satisfaction because it allows staffs to have quick access to information which helps them in answering customers’ questions effectively and on time [24]. C. CC risks for financial institutions One of the risks of CC that financial institutions need to consider is constant dependence on internet. Any problem with the internet would lead to interruption of CC services and this could be costly for financial institutions especially in departments such as exchange rate departments where real time information is needed [24]. Another risk that should be considered by financial institutions is the possibility of losing the computation that is being done. There might be problems when moving applications across from one service provider to another as the service provider is responsible for backup and recovery of data [24]. Legal issues are also important for financial institutions to consider as to who owns the data and who is allowed to access data. For example, in cases where there is a court order or government officials demand to access data to conduct investigations, several legal issues arise and it is important for financial institutions to know how to handle such situations in order to retain the trust their customers have in them [24]. Jurisdictional issues are also an important factor for financial institutions because it is often difficult to fix resources such as data centers to a specific geographic location [14]. Load balancing by the cloud provider, network availability, and data center performance are some of the factors that determine where a data is stored. As a result, an organizations data may be stored in different locations with different legal jurisdictions and different laws about security issues such as data protection and intrusions [14]. This is an important issue for organizations to consider before adopting cloud computing as the safety of their data is eminent for the continued success of the organization.

114

Finally, customers’ information and financial information about transactions are important to financial institutions and should be considered before moving to the cloud. This is because data should be protected from leakage or intentional or accidental loss to protect the reputation of the institution and increase customer’s confidence [24]. In order to understand CC in the context of South Africa, the following section will discuss CC in South Africa. XII. CLOUD COMPUTING IN SOUTH AFRICA (SA) Cloud computing is growing in South Africa and majority of organizations in South Africa have already adopted one form of CC or the other [17], [15]. More and more SA organizations are adopting cloud computing to reduce cost [1]. Google was rated as the most credible vendor in South Africa and the cloud services mostly used in South Africa were webhosting and e-commerce, email hosting/archiving, customer relationship management Systems (CRM), configuration and data backup, and application development [15]. In 2009, IBM built a data center in Johannesburg to offer cloud services to SA organizations and Vmware also launched vSphere’s, a cloud OS in 2009 to serve SA market [17]. There has been a considerable improvement in SA’s bandwidth in recent years [18]. As the rate of bandwidth consumption is increasing every day, South Africa’s bandwidth issues are improving because new undersea telecommunications cables are being developed to increase bandwidth availability in South Africa [13]. The overall online activity of South Africa was estimated to be 67% of the combined online activity of all African countries. South Africa is ranked as one of the top internet countries in Africa and this is good news for CC as it means the quality of internet services available to support CC will be fine [13]. Over twelve million cell phone users in South Africa are said to have internet connectivity on their phones [13]. This means that the cloud services of financial institutions can be accessed by customers via the internet enabled phones and it will contribute to customer satisfaction and assist financial institutions to reach more customers than they would have been able to reach without the technology [13]. In terms of security attacks over the internet, in 2010, South Africa had at least 4646 reported incidents of cybercrime which led to a direct financial loss of $573 million and an extra $995.4 million in time spent to resolve the crime [13]. Financial institutions in South Africa need to be aware of these crimes and how to combat them in order to gain the trust of their customer and ensure a successful implementation of CC [13]. Although cybercrime is said to be high in South Africa, that should not prevent financial institutions from adopting CC as there are many security measures in place which they can implement as part of their readiness measures to protect data and prevent cyber-attacks in CC [23].

XIII. THEORETICAL WORK The Technology, organization and Environment framework originally by Tornatzky and Fleischer in 1990 [19], [29] covers all the aspects that affect CC readiness which affects the success of CC adoption and Implementation. Some of the Technological factors are scalability and flexibility of the technology, fit with the existing Information and Communication Technology infrastructure. Organizational factors include user acceptance, management support, Security budget, Cloud Computing skills and experience, organizational size and fit [19], [29]. Environmental factors include regulatory compliance, industry outlook, competitive pressure and government support [29]. If financial institutions prepare and achieve higher level of readiness across these factors, they will stand a better chance of successfully implementing CC.

Technological Factors

Organizational factors

Cloud Computing Readiness

Cloud Computing Adoption and Implementation

Environmental Factors

Figure 3: Technological, Organizational and Environmental factors affect Cloud Computing readiness of an organization which in turn affects Cloud Computing adoption success

XIV. CONCLUSION This paper discussed the different deployment and service models of CC in order to give a background and establish a good understanding of CC. As shown in figure 2, this paper also suggested that readiness should be a pre-implementation stage before the adoption of CC as necessary resources will be identified and acquired during this stage and this will ensure successful CC implementation. This paper discussed the benefits and issues with CC in order to increase CC readiness of financial institutions in South Africa. This paper further discussed specific benefits and risks of CC to financial institutions. Although, there are some issues with CC implementation, financial institutions should not avoid implementing CC because of these issues but instead, they should come up with ways to combat these issues and most importantly, they should make necessary preparations to achieve a higher level of readiness before adopting CC as higher level of readiness will guarantee a greater chance of success in their CC implementation.

115

Finally this paper contributes to existing literature by emphasizing that achieving a high readiness level is an important factor to consider before adoption and implementation as it will help avoid implementation failure. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank God for the grace to complete this paper. This work is supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF). We would also like to thank Chief and Mrs Akande, Nozuko Aurelia April and Professor Michael Kyobe for their advice and support.

[13] M. Grobler and . Z. Dlamini, "Global Cyber Trends a South African Reality," in IST-Africa, Durban, South Africa, 19 - 21 May, 2010. [14] B. Hay, K. Nance and M. Bishop, "Storm Clouds Rising: Security Challenges for IaaS Cloud Computing," in Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Kauai, Hawaii, January 4-7, 2011. [15] C. Hinde and J.-P. Van Belle, "Cloud Computing in South African SMMEs: Risks and Rewards for Playing at Altitude," International Journal of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1 - 10, 2012. [16] T. M. Khorshed, S. A. Ali and S. A. Wasimi, "A survey on gaps, threat remediation challenges and some thoughts for proactive attack detection in cloud computing," Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 833 - 851, 2012.

REFERENCES

[17] N. Kshetri, "Cloud Computing in Developing Economies: Drivers, effects and policy measures," in Pacific Telecommunications Council, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 17 - 20, 2010.

[1] R. K. Grewal and K. P. Pushpendra , "A Rule-based Approach for Effective Resource Provisioning in Hybrid Cloud Environment," International Journal of Computer Science and Informatics, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 2231 - 5292, 2012.

[18] A. Mahlong, "Office 365 now available," 25 July 2012. [Online]. Available: http://saitnews.co.za/cloud-computing/office365/. [Accessed 27 July 2012].

[2] R. Buyya, . R. Ranjan and R. N. Calheiros, "Modeling and Simulation of Scalable Cloud Computing Environments and the CloudSim Toolkit: Challenges and Opportunities," in Proceedings of the 7th High Performance Computing and Simulation Conference (HPCS 2009, IEEE Press, New York, USA), Leipzig, Germany, June 21 - 24, 2009. [3] A. Beloglazov and R. Buyya, "Energy Efficient Resource Management in Virtualized Cloud Data Centers," in 10th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing, Melbourne, Australia , May 17 - 20, 2010. [4] R. Buyya , C. S. Yeo and S. Venugopal, "Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities," in Procedings of the 10th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 2008), IEEE CS Press, Dalian, China, September 25 - 27, 2008. [5] A. Agopyan, E. Sener and A. Beklen, "Financial Business Cloud for High-Frequency Trading," in The First International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization, Lisbon, Portugal, November 21 - 26, 2010. [6] M. Ahmed, A. S. M. R. Chowdhury, M. Ahmed and M. M. H. Rafee, "An Advanced Survey on Cloud Computing and State-of-the-art Research Issues," International Journal of Computer Science Issues, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 201 - 207, 2010. [7] E. D. Canedo, R. T. de Sousa Junior and R. de Oliveira, "Trust model for reliable file exchange in Cloud Computing," International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT), vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1 - 18, 2012. [8] V. K. Chauhan, K. Bansal and P. Alappanavar, "Exposing cloud computing as a failure," International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 1320 - 1326, 2012. [9] T. Dillon, C. Wu and E. Chang, "Cloud Computing: Issues and Challenges," in 24th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, Perth, Australia, 20 - 23 April, 2010. [10] M. Fathian, P. Akhavan and M. Hoorali, "E-readiness assessment of non-profit ICT SMEs in a developing country: The case of Iran," Technovation, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 578 - 590, 2008. [11] H. Ghanbari, B. Simmons, M. Litoiu and G. Iszlai, "Feedback-based optimization of a private cloud," Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 104 - 111, 2012. [12] A. Goldstuck, "Corporate South Africa looks to the cloud for IT services," 16 November 2011. [Online]. Available: http://www.ipexpo.co.za/Highlights/Corporate-South-Africa-looks-tothe-cloud-for-IT-services. [Accessed 4 July 2012].

[19] M. Marie and M. Lane, "The Adoption of Single Sign-On and Multifactor Authentication in Organisations – A Critical Evaluation Using TOE Framework," Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 161-189, 2010. [20] M. Maurer, V. C. Emeakaroha, I. Brandic and J. Altmann, "Cost– benefit analysis of an SLA mapping approach for defining standardized Cloud computing goods," Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 39 - 47, 2012. [21] S. C. Misra and A. Mondal, "Identification of a company’s suitability for the adoption of cloud computing and modelling its corresponding Return on Investment," Mathematical and Computer Modelling, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 504 - 521, 2011. [22] U. Nasir and M. Niazi, "Cloud Computing Adoption Assessment Model (CAAM)," in Profes, Torre Canne (BR), Italy, June 20 - 22, 2011. [23] S. Rani and A. Gangal, "Security issues of banking adopting the application of cloud computing," International Journal of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 243 - 246, 2012. [24] A. Sharma, "Data Management and Deployment of Cloud Applications in Financial Institutions and its Adoption Challenges," International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1 - 7, 2012. [25] H. R. Snyder, "Indicators of organizational readiness for clinical information technology/systems innovation: a Delphi study," International Journal of Medical Informatics., vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 179 204, 2001. [26] K. Vaidya, A. S. Sajeev and J. Gao, "e-Procurement Assimilation: An Assessment of -business Capabilities and Supplier Readiness in the Australian Public Sector," in Proceedings of the IFIP 4th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, Sanda, Japan , September 19 - 21, 2005. [27] W. Y. C. Wang, A. Rashid and H.-M. Chuang, "Toward the Trend of Cloud Computing," Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 238 - 242, 2011. [28] B. J. Weiner, "A theory of organizational readiness for change," Implementation Science, vol. 4, no. 67, pp. 1 - 9, 2009. [29] K. Zhu and K. L. Kraemer, "Post-Adoption Variations in Usage and Value of E-Business by Organizations: Cross-Country Evidence from the Retail Industry," Information Systems Research, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 61–84, 2005. [30] D. Zissis and D. Lekkas, "Addressing cloud computing security issues," Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 583 592, 2012.

116