Decision Model for Selecting a Cloud Provider: A Study of Service Model Decision Priorities

Abstract

This article describes a methodology to support the decision-making process for Cloud customers, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). For this purpose, we present a decision model to select an appropriate Cloud provider. Despite its success in the industry, Cloud Computing still struggles with fulfilling customer expectations regarding provider characteristics. Due to limited transparency of existing Cloud providers, the evaluation and selection becomes a key issue. With the help of this decision model Cloud providers can be selected on the infrastructure, platform or application level. Subsequently, seven IT executives were interviewed and the decisions related to each level are discussed. Furthermore, differences and similarities between the infrastructure, platform and application levels are presented as most companies have similar requirements for basic systems and standard Cloud use cases. We enrich existing research on Cloud Computing adoption and present a systematic approach to assess Cloud providers and to apply a prioritization of selection criteria for all Cloud models.