Cloud Computing Tipping Point Model

Abstract

Recently a continuing trend toward IT industrialization has grown in popularity. IT services delivered via hardware, software and people are becoming repeatable and usable by a wide range of customers and service providers.This is due, in part, to the commoditization and standardization of technologies, virtualization and the rise of service-oriented software architectures, and (most importantly) the dramatic growth in popularity/use of the Internet and the Web. Taken together, they constitute the basis of a discontinuity that amounts to a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those whouse IT services and those who sell them. The discontinuity implies that the ability to deliver specialised services in IT can be paired with the ability to deliver those services in an industrialised andpervasive way. The reality of this implication is that users of IT related services can focus on what the services provide them, rather than how the services are implemented or hosted. Analogous to how utility companies sell power to subscribers, and telephone companies sell voice and data services, some IT services such as network security management, data centre hosting or even departmental billing can now be easily delivered as a contractual service. This notion of cloud computing capability is gathering momentum rapidly. However, the governance and enterprise architecture to obtain repeatable, scalable and secure business outcomes from cloud computing is still greatly undefined. This paper attempts to evaluate the enterprise architecture features of cloud computing and investigates a model that an IT organisation can leverage to predict evaluate the tipping point where an organisation can make an objective decision to invest in cloud computing. Current research results are attempting to build a quantitative and qualitative service centric framework by mapping cloud computing features with ValIT and COBIT industry best practices.