Abstract
Abstract “Cloud Computing” is the most popular topic in Information Technology for the last few years, and has the potential to ignite the third network revolution since the invention of the Internet. It has now been global phenomena that manufacturers are stepping up their pace to make all of their products connected, software companies are trying to transform their software into cloud application, and enterprises are looking for opportunities to utilize cloud computing to assist their growth. However, even here in Taiwan, which IT products are globally renowned, currently there have not been many companies who have really implemented cloud based services, especially the applications in public cloud. Looking back to the year 2000, during the period of internet bubble, everyone is putting limitless expectation to the potential of the concept of ASP (Application Service Provider), but yet this vision can only be realized ten years later, which is now driving the cloud computing trend. This is a very interesting phenomenon. Based on the author’s observation, the rise of cloud computing service is not likely to follow the fate of ASP. However, it remains a big question mark whether or not the enterprise adoption rate can meet the expectation of the service provider. This study elaborates deeper into this topic, analyzing the main criteria that are used when considering the implementation of cloud computing, the applications that are most likely to use cloud based service. Within these consideration criteria, we investigate whether enterprises are satisfied with current cloud computing services. The result of this research reveals that enterprises have similar view on the importance of each of the criteria. System reliability, data security, network security are considered as the most important criteria. While criteria that are considered least important are the ability to quickly support multiple sites, vendor relationship, and the ability to deploy system on different cloud platforms. In line with the result of many researches, for obvious reason enterprises are unlikely to adopt cloud based service for their critical (core) applications. However, there are also exceptions, such as the email system. The email system is commonly recognized to be a critical application but yet many enterprises are willing to adopt cloud-based service. Regarding satisfaction rate, in term of the criteria that are considered important by enterprises, the performance of current companies and cloud-based services is not satisfactory. On the other hand, the criteria that are considered as unimportant, the enterprise are satified on their performacne. This study uses discriminant analysis and factor analysis to reduce the number of criteria down to 11 items (the top 11 most important criteria), and still maintain the good capability to forecast the cloud computing adoption rate. It is believed that the result of this study can serve as an important reference for domestic enterprises which consider to implement cloud-based services. At the same time, companies who are providing cloud services can also refer to this study to formulate their development and marketing strategy.