ஐ.எஸ்.எஸ்.என்: 2165- 7866
Jeremiah Osida Onunga
Cloud computing makes the dream of computing real as a tool and in the form of service. This internet-based ongoing technology which has brought flexibility, capacity and power of processing has realized service-oriented idea and has created a new ecosystem in the computing world with its great power and benefits. Cloud computing is revolutionizing the Information Technology (IT) industry by enabling organizations to have flexible costs by buying a service instead of owning their assets. This will enable Universities to transfer their processing and storage to cloud for easy access by students. Nevertheless, decision makers in IT organizations have difficulties in evaluating Cloud services because there are no guidelines or any structured form to decide what Cloud services they should use. Cloud computing has emerged as an important platform to seeking innovative ways to save money and increase the trust and value of their information systems. To reap the many benefits cloud computing offers, an organization needs to have a clear cloud governance framework, which must be continually improved to address the emerging cloud computing challenges. Many cloud consumers have extended their IT governance frameworks to their cloud services; however, these frameworks don’t adequately address governance challenges in cloud environments. Additionally, most consumers don’t have quantitative mechanisms to measure their cloud computing governance maturity, and therefore may not identify the opportunities to improve their cloud governance frameworks to attain a higher maturity level.
This research assessed cloud computing readiness of Turkana University College, Kenya by identifying the various opportunities cloud computing offers as well as the challenges it presents to the University. Path analysis was used to establish the various factors that contribute to and the extent to which they influence effective cloud governance in the University College. In this paper, author proposed a model based on a set of criteria to evaluate Cloud services that consists in six groups of thirty measurement criteria. In order to evaluate this proposal to make demonstrations with Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. Author made interviews with clients, suppliers, and experts of Cloud services. Author also presented different major factors in cloud computing performance and analyzed and evaluated cloud performance in various scenarios considering these factors. The results of path analysis and the set criteria model were used to determine the cloud computing capability maturity level of the University College.