The European code of conduct on cloud services and data portability: What changes in the cloud ecosystem

Abstract

Cloud computing, IaaS Cloud Services and Data Portability are topics of great interest and largely contemplated lately not only because of the focus the academia and the research community is showing, but also of the enterprises and the ECs continuously growing interest. Even though the adoption of cloud computing by European enterprises specially is steadily growing, it has not been as big as it would have been expected due to specific barriers faced by Cloud Service Customers (CSCs) such as lack of trust, uncertainty about the applicable law, unclear compliance to existing schemes and legislation, as well as the lack of interoperability among service providers, of transparency in security aspects and of control of the data. The work presented deliberates what effect a Code of Conduct (Code) for Data Portability and Cloud Service Switching for IaaS Cloud services would have if included in the Certification Scheme for Cloud Computing already being prepared by the EC, and if the impact will in fact be the increase of CSCs condense regarding porting and switching between IaaS cloud services, at a low cost and with minimal disruption. The economics of IaaS Cloud Services will play a significant role on how cloud computing will grow, so a review of available economic models used to forecast the economic impact of cloud computing will be presented, along with a proposal of a model that could potentially be used to forecast the economic footprint of a Code for Data Portability and Cloud Service Switching.