A cloud adoption decision support model based on fuzzy cognitive maps

Abstract

Cloud Computing has become nowadays a significant field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Both cloud providers and customers invest time and resources in an endeavor of the former to serve effectively the needs of the latter so as to adopt efficiently such cloud services, based their needs. The decision to adopt cloud services falls within the category of complex and difficult to model real-world problems. Aiming to support the cloud adoption decision process, we propose in this paper an approach based on Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) which models the parameters that potentially influence such a decision. The construction and analysis of the map is based on factors reported in the relevant literature and the utilization of experts' opinion. The proposed approach is evaluated through four real-world experimental cases and the suggestions of the model are compared with the customers' final decisions. The evaluation indicated that the proposed approach is capable of capturing the dynamics behind the interdependencies of the participating factors.