Avaliação de ferramentas de computação em nuvem para empresas virtuais

Abstract

Collaborative Networks (CN) has arisen as a prominent enterprise strategy for leveraging new sustainable models, to Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME) in more particular. There are several types of CNs. This paper focuses on the Virtual Enterprise (VE) type, which can be defined as a dynamic and temporary network of SMEs that collaborate with each other towards achieving a common goal, sharing resources, knowledge, costs, risks and benefits. In a VE the diverse kinds of transactions among its members are performed pretty much via Internet, demanding a reasonable amount of investment on IT and human resources from the enterprises. However, SMEs usually have large technical and financial limitations. The underlying premise of this work is that VE members can also share IT resources so as to decrease their general costs. Cloud computing has become a sound approach nowadays and there are plenty of cloud-based tools already available. Therefore, it is important to SMEs knowing which ones fit the VE requirements best. This is the core goal of this paper, also identifying such requirements, the requirements to evaluate such cloud-based tools, and making a comparison among them. Results are assessed and some reflections about the feasibility of a cloud approach for VEs are presented in the end.