Implementation of Cloud Computing for SMEs

Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, especially for businesses and organizations. A lot of enterprises are shifting to the clouds because it offers a lot of benefits. With cloud computing, SMEs no longer have to maintain software and servers on their premises. There is no need to employ highly technical personnel to maintain the IT infrastructure. What businesses do now is that they rent a space on a server located anywhere in the world so that they can access their software applications. A lot of large businesses have moved to the clouds and it is expected that small and medium-sized businesses will follow suit. SMEs can enjoy a lot of benefits when they shift to the clouds. One of such benefits is that they can save on costs. There is no need to invest on hardware and not use it fully. With cloud computing, SMEs can pay only for what they have utilized. They have the option to choose the kind of service level they require. Cloud computing service providers take care of IT support, licenses, and costly equipment. They also ensure that they have the newest software versions installed on their systems. Thus, SMEs need not worry about software installations and updates. Also, cloud computing service providers employ IT experts who can help users with their needs. The aim of this research work is to provide an overview of the implementation of cloud computing for Small and Medium Enterprises to help them make strategic decisions regarding the adoption of cloud computing within their own environment.


Introduction
In order to determine the viability and efficiency of Cloud Computing for SMEs and any other potential benefits, this study will look at the political, economic, social and technological factors concerning CC adoption. The aim is to identify the most relevant studies and see if CC adoption in an ICT sense does add value for SMEs.
SMEs will not normally have a large ICT department or budget, so they are not likely to have access to sophisticated IT architectures and supporting tools. CC appears to be the solution to many of their business requirements, while at the same time avoiding conventional IT maintenance costs. CC allows them to improve IT support for their commercial activities and keep pace with new technologies [Dimitrakos 2010]. The following paragraphs introduce some of the main concepts at stake in this paper, namely Cloud Computing, SME and PEST.
Cloud Computing is a new IT consumer delivery model that aims to provide high availability and easy access [Li et al. 2009; Marta et al. 2011;Sheng-Yuan et al. 2010]. As referred to in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of Cloud Computing [NIST 2011], this model is composed of five essential characteristics: -(On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service); three service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)); and, four deployment models (Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid cloud). Key enabling technologies include: (1) fast wide-area networks, (2) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and (3) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware .
Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysisor PEST analysis -is a strategic tool for understanding market growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations. This tool gives SMEs an overview of the different factors that have to be taken into consideration for the development of their business strategy.
The SME definition adopted in this paper is the one concerning European Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC [Commission 2003;Li et al. 2009].
Accordingly, CC, its services and deploying models, offers the opportunity for small businesses to subscribe to pay-per-use top class solutions at an affordable price and fulfill their operational needs to access infrastructure, platform and software over the Internet, without having to host or maintain the services themselves [Dillon et al. 2010]. Typically, some of the Cloud applications most used by SMEs are website hosting, file-server, e-mail system and related features (e.g. address book, calendar, etc.  factors that should be considered by  SMEs when considering the strategic decision to  adopt Cloud Computing, as an ICT solution? ii. Why are these factors particularly relevant to the business processes of SMEs? The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces CC and its main elements (e.g. architectures, security, deployment strategies) [Dillon et al. 2010]. Some Cloud Computing adoption models are described, as well the main concepts associated with them. Section 3 explains the methodological approach of a scoping review; this was chosen as the most appropriate method to address the questions of -what and -why [Davis et al. 2009] that are at the core of this paper. The scoping review strategy is based on a protocol which includes search criteria to retrieve the most appropriate papers from the literature; first level selection was based on conventional filtering, while a hermeneutical analysis was used as a focus for second level selection [Anderson et al. 2008;Marta et al. 2011;Rumrill et al. 2010].
Section 4 presents the results obtained by applying the methods described in Section 3; these are then subjected to a PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) analysis and discussed.
Section 5 provides the Conclusions and Proposals for future work.

The Adoption of Cloud Computing by SME's
Cloud Computing was created for commercial purposes in 2007 by industry giants like Google and Amazon, Cloud Computing technology and resources are based in centralized data centers, dynamically adjusted and tuned to achieve optimum efficiency, providing an unparalleled economy of scale. The Cloud model is delivered to end users (individuals, SMEs and enterprises) as oriented pay-per-use services in which guarantees are offered by the providers by means of customized Service Level Agreements (SLAs) [Yang et al. 2009]. This converts computing power into a public utility like water, electricity or gas supplies; it is a profound paradigm change for the IT industry and possibly for society as a whole [Marta et al. 2011].
From the standpoint of an SME, the benefits of Cloud-based technologies are: low start-up costs, low cost for sporadic use, ease of management, scalability, device and location independence and rapid innovation, according to Google [TechRepublic et al. 2009]. Therefore, helping businesses to attain the benefits of CC, by taking advantage of its potential for incremental improvement, avoids disruptive transformation of business processes [Skilton 2010]. SMEs stand to profit from pay-per-use, high performance computing scenarios [Dimitrakos 2010], enabling them to encourage innovation and enhance their competitiveness [Chen et al. 2011].
From a customer's point of view [Nair et al. 2010], the cloud computing service delivery model brings -capital expenditure reduction, increased IT agility, faster return on investment, removal of barriers to entry and a more robust and resilient infrastructure, leading to better business continuity . CC technology and services generate promising opportunities for SMEs to collaborate and create new competitive advantages in the current digital business context [Petrakou et al. 2011].
The attractiveness of Cloud Computing lies in its ability to show SME entrepreneurs immediate cost savings, increased productivity and improved responsiveness to the business, by incorporating cloud infrastructure as part of their IT strategy. According to [Tumer 2010], CC can act as a key enabler for future innovation, adding value and enhancing growth, wealth and employment in the global economy, thus creating healthy and sustainable societies.
Sections 3, 4 and 5 follow the framework for conducting a scoping review study, proposed by [Arksey et al. 2005] and later adopted by several authors, including Davis et al.   Kitchenham et al. 2007]. Taking these studies as illustrative of the application of scoping reviews, it seems to be an appropriate methodology to discover the evidence available in the literature, concerning Cloud Computing adoption and address the research questions raised here. The application of this methodological approach and the methods and techniques used to collect the data are shown in the following subsections.

Methodological Approach
ISI Web of Knowledge-Web of Science TS=(cloud AND (SME OR small medium enterprise*)) Google Scholar: -Cloud computing ∥ AND -Technology Adoption ∥ AND (external environment OR external factor*) AND (SME OR -small and medium enterprise* ∥) IEEE Xplore: Cloud AND Adoption AND SME

B. Paper Selection
Taking into account the research questions and the subsequent PEST analysis, the keywords used, together with their synonymous and related terms, are those shown in the search strings developed. To perform these searches, the authors had access to the ISI Web of Knowledge -Web of Science (WoS) [Reuters 2011], IEEE Xplore [IEEE 2011] and Google Scholar [Google 2011] databases. The following search strings were applied, these being the ones which best reflected the information required for this paper. It should be pointed out that they take account the syntax used in each of the above mentioned databases, differing on the restrictive terms according to the language specificity and search facilities of each of them. This required additional manual intervention when deciding on the inclusion or exclusion of the retrieved papers as Table 1 demonstrates: The searches were restricted to English language documents, within the time frame 2009-2011, because Cloud Computing is a relatively recent theme which is being continuously updated.
The following exclusion criteria were used to filter the retrieved studies: i.
Paper(s) out of scope ii.
Paper(s) addressing only one of the perspectives (Cloud Computing, SME, PEST) iii.
Paper(s) duplicated among databases iv.
References to Abstracts and

c) Hermeneutic analysis
The selected papers were subjected to hermeneutical analysis, using the software package, Atlas.ti (Version 6.2). Taking into account the requirements for PEST analysis, four codes were created, corresponding to the four different perspectives addressed by this analysis framework: political (P); economic (E); social (S); and technological (T).
The total nº of relevant papers obtained from the searches described at b) and subsequent application of the exclusion criteria defined above, was 21. The PEST analysis using Atlas.ti software, identified the following numbers of quotes ( Table 2).

PEST Analysis
To address the first question of this paper and discover some of the main factors that should be considered by SMEs when considering the strategic decision to adopt Cloud Computing, an analysis of the 21 papers retrieved based on the PEST framework was performed. The headings in the four quadrants in PEST analysis also gives a framework for reviewing the situation and describing why these factors are particularly relevant to the business processes of SMEs, thus addressing the second research question.
The main results of the PEST analysis are shown in Table  3.  ECONOMIC Allows flexible payment (e.g. pay-per-use), without the need for customers to own the IT infrastructure or software applications required for the business needs (SaaS-Software as a service). This means that the SMEs, do not need to maintain and upgrade servers, the different applications (the software) and the security. Instead, the SMEs can rely on the cloud service provider that can easily scale up and down through assigning and re-assigning physical and virtual resources in order to meet the actual need. The ongoing economic crisis has prompted responses by governments to limit economic effects of the credit crunch; the crisis should not damage the drivers of long-term growth. As result SMEs should invest in smart infrastructure and green technology.

[Hanna 2010]
The need for regular new software purchases is reduced or eliminated. [Jayakar et al. 2010] In terms of ongoing cost/productivity of companies' improvements, it estimates a 50-75% reduction in the time and effort it takes to add new products. [Jayakar et al. 2010] Greater security is possible due to economies of scale and the ability to afford better security experts. Opportunity for support managers, engineers, sales and marketing staff to develop new skills; working with new and potentially prestigious technology, which may lead to career progression and increased job satisfaction.   Table 3 presents a baseline with the contributions of the primary documents used for mapping the PEST analysis. The conclusions and future work discussed in the next Section are grounded on results contained in this table, expressing the political, economic, social and technological factors related with the adoption of CC by SMEs.

Discussion and Conclusions, Future Work
The experiences of SMEs investing in innovative technologies, such as Cloud Computing, should provide additional evidence concerning patterns of adoption [Levy 2009]. It becomes obvious from the PEST analysis that the emerging systems of Cloud Computing have the potential to multiply the productivity, efficiency and profitability of small scale enterprises. However, some SMEs remain reluctant to avail themselves of broadband services, or consider the possible advantages of Cloud Computing, due to perceptions (or misconceptions) regarding possible capital investment, fear of complexity, lack of understanding of the potential benefits, and lack of technical resources. Others are more willing to test broadband or Cloud applications, but do not see it as part of a larger strategy [Jayakar et al. 2010]. Evidence is also emerging to suggest that even large companies (contrary to conventional wisdom) are actually embracing Cloud services. Consequently, an increasing number of companies (small and large) are beginning to see some real value in using the Cloud [Sultan 2010].
There are many opportunities and advantages for SMEs in using Cloud Computing, such as opportunities to test new software, evaluate third party applications, increase resources on demand to satisfy seasonal or temporary demand and offer software to customers as SaaS. Other benefits include time saved dealing with technology issues, allowing staff to focus on core competencies. Many of the same functions can be performed faster and more efficiently by using modern IT infrastructure and software than traditional in-place data centers. As a result, Cloud computing is likely to be an attractive option for many SMEs, particularly in the current global economic crisis, due to its flexible cost structure and scalability.
Cloud Computing fits specific SMEs needs as follows: i.
Being available off the shelf; ii.
Low price; v.
Having a variety of options to choose from; vi.
Availability of staff to work with and maintain the system; viii.
Software already existing to implement customizable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP); x.
Existence -at least in some countries -of Government/tax regulation and policies that support IT projects based on Cloud computing. In the specific case of SMEs, access to Cloud services is becoming a critical element for their competitiveness and efficiency. Conversely, lack of access would imply that the SME sector will not achieve its full potential. In general, Cloud Computing services provide an open business platform for everyone, everywhere, for every country, for every company, for every organization and for every kind of business and new opportunities for collaboration and social networking between business partners, by enabling access to sources of information that are time and distance independent.
The PEST factors, combined with external micro-environmental factors and internal drivers, can be viewed as a combination of both opportunities and threats. Nevertheless, this methodology addresses only external factors and their influence on organizations' behavior not taking into account the role that internal variables can play in this context. In this sense and for future research, a SWOT analysis is recommended, when studying the mix of internal and external factors concerning the adoption of Cloud Computing by SMEs.