Understanding Cloud Requirements - A Supply Chain Lifecycle Approach

Cloud Computing is offering competitive advantages to companies through flexible and, scalable access to computing resources. More and more companies are moving to cloud environments; therefore understanding the requirements for this process is both important and beneficial. The requirements for migrating from a traditional computing environment to a cloud hosting environment are discussed in this paper, considering this migration from a supply chain lifecycle perspective. The cloud supply chain is examined from a lifecycle perspective for the management of the migration project. This paper illustrates the requirements that need to be considered when adopting a cloud migration strategy and the steps to take in order to manage this process. Index Terms—cloud computing; supply chain; cloud sourcing; cloud lifecycle. The cloud provides scalable, on-demand network access to virtualised computing resources (1). This is a very attractive