Digital Transformation: Evaluating Emerging Technologies. Группа авторов
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when migrating its information technology to cloud servers. Among its criteria, Protection, Scalability and Service Charge were ranked as the top three. These are the criteria the company should pay close attention to when making decisions. Also, IaaS was the preferred cloud service with a score of 0.35. SaaS came in second with a close score of 0.34. Even though IaaS was the winning choice of cloud service, there is no major differentiation between IaaS and SaaS because of their close scores. This makes the decision inconclusive.
Considering the suggestions and recommendations during our class presentation, we conducted a second round of analysis on the model and pairwise comparison data. In this round, we separated the inputs of the team members and the external experts: inputs from the five team members were used for Level 1 and Level 2 comparisons, while the inputs from the two external experts were used for Level 3 comparisons.
The reason for the second round of analysis is that the executives understand the company’s Mission, Objectives and Criteria under each objective. They are not technical experts and may not be able to make sound decisions on the third level of alternatives. As for the external cloud experts, although they are versed in the technical details of the three types of cloud service alternatives, they are not familiar with the inner workings of the company since they are not members. The results of the second round of analysis show that Security remains the top concern of the company when migrating to the cloud. Scalability, Protection and Service Charge again ranked as the top three among all the criteria, albeit with minor differences in actual weights. IaaS came out as the winner again with a score of 0.38, while SaaS came in as the second choice with a score of 0.32. The difference between the IaaS and SaaS strategies is more significant as compared to the first round. IaaS is the clear winner. We believe that the result from the second round of comparison is more convincing.
Detailed HDM model comparison results and our analysis are discussed in the following sections of this report.
6.1.First round of analysis
All seven experts were asked to make the pairwise comparison of all objectives, criteria and alternatives. Their pairwise comparison results were counted towards the final decision.
The Level 1 comparison results show that Security is the company’s top concern among all objectives when migrating to the cloud (see Table 1). This is due to the nature of BMF’s business sector. As the company is an online retail company, it has lots of confidential customer identification and finance information, as well as online transaction information. These information needs to be kept at the highest level of privacy. Any leakage could be fatal to the company’s reputation and might be subject to fines if any online financial transaction related to the federal compliance code is violated.
Migration is ranked as the least significant objective. This shows that the company is confident in its management ability, especially within its IT department. Some of the IT management team members have previous experience in cloud migration and are familiar with the process. The company is least concerned over managing the migration.
The Level 2 comparison results show that Protection, Scalability and Service Charge are among the top three criteria the company would consider when choosing the right cloud service type. Business migration and technical migration ranked the lowest among all the criteria (see Table 2).
Table 1.Level 1 comparison results.
Since security is the company’s top concern when migrating to the cloud, it is no surprise that protection is the most important criterion to consider. After migrating to the cloud, the company needs to work closely with the cloud service provider to provide the satisfactory level of data protection, communication protection and operation protection.
Scalability is one of the major reasons the company will want to migrate to the cloud. The capability to meet the company’s growth is essential. The company projected a year over year growth of 20% in the coming years. The cloud service choice needs to be able to handle this growth without significant successive migration efforts or additional charges.
Service Charge as a repeated cost is important to the financial health of a company. Whether this charge will increase significantly over time with the growth of the company needs to be carefully considered and counted into the total cost of production. Migrating to cloud computing is expected to be a cost-effective way of doing business. A good calculation and estimate of cloud service charges will help improve the profit margin of the company.
Table 2.Level 2 comparison results.
The company has an experienced IT department. BMF’s IT manager has previous experience in cloud migration; this helps to make the migration process easier for both business and technical areas. Also, the IT staff’s knowledge in cloud server management adds confidence to the top management of this company over the technical aspect of this migration.
The Level 3 comparison results show that IaaS, with a score of 0.35, is the first choice for the cloud service that will suit the company’s needs. SaaS, with a score of 0.34, is a close second choice (see Table 3). The difference between IaaS and SaaS is very small. Two out of seven experts scored IaaS as the first choice, while three out of seven experts scored SaaS as the first choice. IaaS get the highest average score partially due to one of the experts giving IaaS a very high score of 0.5. It could be viewed as an outlier in this set of data; this makes the final decision in IaaS less convincing. By simply looking at the scores, it seems that both IaaS and SaaS could be the final decision from this model.
Table 3.Level 3 comparison results.
Based on our research and literature review, we are confident of the HDM model we set up for this problem. We believe that our HDM model covers all the criteria that need to be considered when making this decision. After evaluating the comments from the class presentation and discussion within our group, we found out that our evaluation method in this round of analysis was flawed. It had been an inaccurate assumption to include all the seven experts’ pairwise comparison inputs in each of the three levels of comparison.
The company executives in the expert panel are not technical experts. They have very limited knowledge on how cloud computation and cloud migration works. Their pairwise comparisons in Level 3 on each alternative were not reliable, though their inputs in Level 1 and Level 2 comparisons were useful since they are most familiar with the company’s current condition and future needs. In contrast, the two external experts’ inputs in Level 3 comparisons were valuable because they are familiar with the technical issues and barriers a company could face during migration. However, since they are not familiar with the company’s internal operation, their inputs on Level 1 and Level 2 comparisons were mostly based on their general knowledge of companies of similar scale, and were therefore less reliable.
To resolve this issue in the first round of analysis, we conducted a second round of analysis on the HDM model.
6.2.Second round of analysis
To test the HDM model and fix our problem in the expert panel use, we conducted a second round of analysis. During the second round, we divided the seven experts into two panels. Expert Panel 1 consisted of the five team members acting as the executive team, who would make pairwise comparisons in Level 1 and Level 2 of this model, while Expert Panel 2 consisted of the two external cloud migration consultants, who would make pairwise comparisons in Level 3 only.
Table 4.Level 1 comparison results.