International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Information Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

A fad or future of IT?: A comprehensive literature review on the cloud

computing research
Merve Bayramusta a , V. Aslihan Nasir b,∗
a
Siemens AS, Corporate Technology, Development Center, 41480 Kocaeli, Turkey
b
Department of Management Information Systems, Bogazici University, Hisar Campus B Block, R. Hisarustu Bebek, 34342 Istanbul, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Cloud computing is now a global trend and during the past decade, has drawn attention from both
Received 28 January 2015 academic and business communities. Although the evolution of cloud computing has not reached the
Received in revised form 31 January 2016 maturity level, there is still adequate research about the topic. The main purpose of this paper is to
Accepted 3 April 2016
examine the development and evolution of cloud computing over time. A content analysis was conducted
for 236 scholarly journal articles, which were published between 2009 and 2014 in order to (i) identify the
Keywords:
possible trends and changes in cloud computing over the six years, (ii) compare publishing productivity
Cloud computing
of journals about the cloud computing subject, and (iii) guide future research about cloud computing.
Content analysis
Trend analysis
The results show that the majority of the cloud computing research is about “cloud computing adoption”
(19%), and it was followed by the “legal and ethical issues” of cloud computing (15%). It is also found
that “cloud computing for mobile applications” (6%), “benefits & challenges of cloud computing” (5%) and
“energy consumption dimension of cloud computing” (4%) are the least attention-grabbing themes in the
literature. However, “cloud computing for mobile applications” and “energy consumption dimension of
cloud computing” themes have become popular in the last two years, so they are expected to be trendy
topics of the near future. Finally, another finding of this study is that the majority of the articles were
published by engineering, information systems or technical journals such as “IT Professional Magazine”,
“International Journal of Information Management” and “Mobile Networks and Applications”. It seems as if
this topic is generally ignored by the managerial and organizational journals even though the impact of
cloud computing on organizations and institutions is immense and is in need of investigation.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction software solutions over the Internet or other networks (Laudon &
Laudon, 2014, p. 200).
The development of the Internet and subsequently the WWW Although cloud storage sounds like something related to
has placed pressure on organizations to review their business func- weather fronts, it actually refers to saving data to a remote database,
tions (CRM, Sales, BPM etc.). IT infrastructure models themselves which is maintained by third parties, instead of hard drive or local
have also evolved, most recently from Enterprise to Cloud Comput- storage device (Wu, Zhang, Lin, & Ju, 2010). Cloud computing was
ing. There are five stages in this evolution representing different first introduced with the creation of the ARPANET to allow peo-
infrastructure elements; namely, Stage 1: General-Purpose Main- ple to benefit from resources in different time zones (Leiner et al.,
frame and Minicomputer Era, Stage 2: Personal Computer Era, Stage 1997). Sultan (2013, p. 810) stated that “Cloud Computing is a
3: Client/Server Era, Stage 4: Enterprise Computing Era and Stage model of delivering a range of IT services remotely through the
5: Cloud and Mobile Computing Era (Laudon & Laudon, 2014, p. Internet and/or a networked IT environment”. Depending on the
197–200). Cloud Computing started in the 2000s as the last stage National Institute of Standards and Technology, Wu et al. (2010,
of IT infrastructure evolution which refers to a computing model p. 151) defined cloud computing as “a model for enabling conve-
where organizations or individuals obtain computing power and nient, on demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications,
and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction”. In an
∗ Corresponding author. earlier study, Vouk (2008) stated that cloud computing embraces
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Bayramusta), cyberinfrastructure, and builds upon decades of research in virtual-
[email protected] (V.A. Nasir).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016.04.006
0268-4012/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
636 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

ization, distributed computing, grid computing, utility computing, principles, namely: cloud ecosystem enablement, cloud infras-
and, more recently, networking, web and software services. In a tructure and its management, service-orientation, cloud core on
report from Gartner Inc. (2012), it is forecasted that, cloud services provisioning and subscription, compostable cloud offerings, cloud
revenue will reach nearly $207 billion by the end of 2016. In today’s information architecture and management, and cloud quality ana-
global cloud computing market Amazon is the largest player, but lytics. Furthermore, in a white paper prepared by Oracle (2012, p. 8),
it is challenged by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage, also it is stated that there are some architectural principles and guide-
Microsoft offers Hotmail and OneDrive and Google offers Gmail and lines that should be followed in order to achieve success in cloud
Google Drive as free cloud services for consumers (Euromonitor computing; these principles are listed as follows:
International, 2012, p. 68).
Some scholars and practitioners in the ICT industry see similar- • Cloud interfaces and formats must conform to relevant industry
ities between cloud-base services and bureau computing. Wu et al. standards.
(2010) mentioned that the fundamental ideas for cloud storage are • The system must present only the information (interfaces etc.)
related to past service bureau computing paradigms and to those of necessary to perform each specific function.
application service providers and storage service providers of the • The architecture should provide monitoring of all aspects of
late 90s. However, the authors believe that the economic situation resource usage for the various dimensions required by both the
and the advent of new technologies have triggered strong inter- Cloud consumer and provider.
est in the cloud storage provider model (Wu et al., 2010). Back in • Any cloud provider’s claims of reliability, availability, security,
the 1970s, bureau computing providers ran enterprise software on and performance must be verifiable.
their mainframe or minicomputers, and sold these applications to • Availability should not be limited by inevitable hardware failures.
customers as a service. Nevertheless, according to Steve McCarthy • Robust identity domain separation—consumers of the system
from UXC Connect (2014), there are significant differences between have no exposure to the consequences of other consumers’ use
cloud and bureau computing; and he continued that “with bureau of the system.
you were tied into a single supplier and their applications. With • Transparent architecture and control—consumers have visibility
cloud, you have a world of choice”. Sharing resources is a similar into the design and operation of the system.
concept between cloud computing and bureau computing, how- • Improved productivity—deliver an order of magnitude improve-
ever the early-generation storage service providers ran into some ment over current levels of efficiency and productivity experi-
problems like network costs and customers concerns over sharing enced in traditional IT environments.
the computing infrastructure with other similar businesses (Toigo, • Assured data protection—consumers are assured of compliance
2009). Today, cloud computing offers a better customer experience with data privacy standards and regulations, have confidence that
and unlike the old bureau services, applications and services can be removal of data is absolute.
obtained from multiple providers (Toigo, 2009). • Automate operations—consumers’ runtime of business process
As an advantage of better customer experience, the cloud com- services and platform services involves minimal manual opera-
puting adoption supports organizations to concentrate on their tions.
own businesses. All IT operations will be handled by experts in
cloud service providers, and organizations do not need to deal with
According to Yoo (2011, p. 406), cloud computing has four
a redundant load of IT operations. Although deploying software out
key concepts which are; service oriented architecture/thin clients,
in the cloud has significant benefits like; cost reduction, mobility
delivery models for cloud computing, virtualization and deploy-
and collaboration; risks that will affect all levels of computational
ment strategies.
ecosystem should be considered additionally (Hayes, 2008 p. 9).
Likewise, Rimal, Jukan, Katsaros, and Goeleven (2011) mention
that there are several issues with the cloud such as security, avail- 1.1. Service oriented architecture/thin clients
ability, scalability, interoperability, service level agreement, data
migration, data governance, trusty pyramid, user-centric privacy, In the early stages of the IT infrastructure evolution, consumers
transparency, political and legal issues, business service manage- had to purchase software and computing power as products, but
ment etc. In their study, Wu et al. (2010) listed ten crucial common nowadays cloud computing reconceptualizes software and com-
denominators which foster the value of cloud computing as fol- puting power which are purchased as services on an as-needed
lows: elasticity, automatic, scalability, data security, performance, basis (Yoo, 2011, p. 407). The cloud computing is based on service-
reliability, ease of management, ease of data access, energy effi- oriented architecture (SOA) and virtualization of hardware and
ciency, and latency. In addition, Rimal et al. (2011) contended software which enable the cloud’s reusability and extensibility
that the biggest challenge of cloud computing is the lack of a de (Zhang, Zhang, Fiaidhi, & Chang, 2010). Unlike distributed com-
facto standard or single architectural method, which can meet the puting such as grid computing, which connects remote computers
requirements of an enterprise cloud approach. In their study, Rimal geographically into a single network to combine processing power
et al. (2011) stated that the architectural requirements of cloud and create virtual supercomputers, cloud computing is easily con-
computing are classified according to the requirements of cloud figurable by end users. Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail,
providers, the enterprises that use the cloud, and end-users. The for example, host their email applications and data in datacenters.
authors proclaimed that from the provider’s perspective, highly effi- Therefore, consumers who access e-mail through these web-based
cient service architecture to support infrastructure and services services do not need to run an email program or store their mes-
is needed in order to provide virtualized and dynamic services; sages locally (Yoo, 2011, p. 407).
whereas from the enterprise’s perspective, a QoS-enabled, secure
and scalable system is needed (Rimal et al., 2011). Furthermore, 1.2. Delivery models for cloud computing
the authors pointed out that from the user’s perspective, the fun-
damental requirement is a simplified interface with adaptability Due to the change from enterprise computing to cloud com-
and self-learning capability that should focus transparent pricing puting, organizations and individuals need to develop new skills
and metering. Similarly, Singh et al. (2012), proposed an integrated and competences. As the usage of cloud computing services
co-innovation and co-production framework to get cloud vendors, increases, organizations start to investigate how to adapt their busi-
cloud partners, and cloud clients to work together based on seven ness structure to a cloud computing model. This model includes
 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644 637

three different types of services (Sultan, 2013, p. 810; Fouquet, Table 1

Databases and scopes.
Niedermayer & Carle, 2009, p. 31):
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); focuses on hardware and Database Scopes
IT infrastructure management which includes storage and pro- ABI/INFORM Complete ABI/INFORM Complete is a business research
cessing capabilities. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is the database which was launched in the early
well-known example for IaaS. Also virtual harddisks that can be 1970s. It includes all content found in
accessed from different virtual machines can be given as another ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Dateline, and
ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry. It also
example.
includes ABI/INFORM Archive, which offers a
Platform as a Service (PaaS); concentrates on middleware deep backfile of many of the most important
which provides development tools and hosting options for cloud business journals of the last century.
clients to manage their own applications. PaaS gives end users Emerald Emerald is a global publisher linking research
control over application design, but not control over physical infras- and practice to the benefit of society. The
tructure like when a cloud operator offers an API which can be company manages a portfolio of nearly 300
used by an application developer. Microsoft Azure and Google App journals and over 2350 books and book series
volumes, as well as providing an extensive
Engine are the well known examples for PaaS.
range of online products and additional
Software as a Service (SaaS); includes software applications customer resources and services.
which support business related processes like customer rela-
Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.
tionship management, supply chain management or enterprise
resource planning. SaaS does not give end users control over appli-
cation design. Gmail, Google Docs, Salesforce.com are well known 1.4.3. Hybrid Cloud
examples for SaaS. This technique integrates both the public and the private cloud.
For instance, in a Hybrid Cloud deployment, critical services with
security requirements may be hosted on private clouds while the
1.3. Virtualization
other services may be hosted on public clouds.
The main purpose of this paper is to examine through the lit-
In the past, network costs created obstacles for cloud storage
erature the development and evolution of cloud computing over
vendors. Today, network connectivity is faster, cheaper and more
time. A content analysis was conducted for 236 scholarly journal
secure after the virtualization technology is started to be used in
articles, which were published between 2009 and 2014 in order
corporate data centers (Toigo, 2009).
to (i) identify the possible trends and changes in cloud computing
Machine virtualization, allows the computing power of a phys-
over the six years, (ii) compare publishing productivity of journals
ical machine to be divided into multiple virtual machines by
about the cloud computing subject and (iii) guide future research
hosting multiple and heterogeneous operating systems on the
about cloud computing.
same hardware, and additionally hypervisor manages virtualiza-
tion by running on the physical host to achieve this emulation
2. Research methodology
(García-Valls, Cucinotta, & Lu, 2014, p. 726). According to Dhar
(2012, p. 674), “Virtualization hides the physical characteristics
2.1. Content analysis
of a computing platform from users, creates a simulated com-
puter environment showing another abstract computing platform
There has been a remarkable increase in cloud computing
such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or net-
research over the years, and it continues developing to satisfy the
work resources”. Modern virtualization techniques allows cloud
businesses’ needs. The content of articles that are published in
computing to transfer virtual machine instances from one server
scholarly journals can give an idea about the change in research
to another which has more space, whereby the ability to reallo-
and themes about cloud computing. This study provides a content
cate storage and computing power increases the flexibility and
analysis of research articles, which were published over six years,
scalability of computing operations (Yoo, 2011, p. 407). In other
to understand the evolution of cloud computing. “Content analysis
words, as stated by Rimal et al. (2011), virtualization in the
is a research method that uses a set of procedures to make valid
cloud comprises server virtualization, client/desktop/application
inferences from text” (Weber, 1990, p. 117). The purpose of this
virtualization, storage virtualization, network virtualization, and
study is; to set light on the progress of cloud computing in academic
service/application infrastructure virtualization.
research.
Fig. 1 illustrates the content analysis process. As a first stage, the
1.4. Deployment strategies texts are identified and samples are selected. Second stage includes
the unit specification of analysis. Coders identify the theme cate-
According to the way that the cloud provides service to users, gories and determine the category scheme as the third stage. In
cloud deployment strategies change. There are three types of the fourth stage, judges select the final categories from the cate-
deployment method (Naghavi, 2012, p. 602): gory scheme. Afterwards, reliability analysis is conducted to find
out the agreement level of the judges as the fifth stage. Finally, last
stage includes the analysis of collected data.
1.4.1. Public Cloud
Resources are owned and managed by third party providers who
2.2. Selecting sample
share these resources with the customers. It offers easy resource
management, scalability and flexibility. Amazon’s Web Service and
The study’s sample contains 236 cloud computing research arti-
Google’s App Engine are well known examples.
cles published from 2009 to 2014. Two databases were scanned
through the library search facilities. Table 1 shows the details of
1.4.2. Private Cloud these databases which include journals with different disciplines.
The computing infrastructure is dedicated to a particular organi- The study sample consisted of articles from scholarly journals,
zation that resources are owned and managed by the organization. which contain the “Cloud Computing” phrase in the title of the
These clouds are more secure but also more expensive. articles that
638 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

Fig. 1. The content analysis process.

Source: Nasir (2005, p. 444).

2.3. Specifying the unit of analysis Table 2

Final list of theme categories.

“Word”, “Word sense”, “Sentence”, “Theme”, “Paragraph”, and Theme categories

“Whole text” are generally used in content analysis literature to 1. Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing
determine the basic unit of test to make a classification (Weber, 2. Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing
1990). The unit of analysis in this content analysis is chosen as the 3. Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing
“Theme” of articles. 4. Cloud Computing Adoption
5. Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing
Titles and abstracts of all 236 articles were reviewed to deter-
6. Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing
mine the theme to find out what was studied in these selected 7. Economic Dimension of Cloud Computing
papers. These articles were categorized in order to: 8. Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors
9. Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications
10. Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

• identify the main themes that were examined in the cloud com-
puting literature,
• determine the distribution of cloud computing themes over years, 2.5. Selection of final categories
and
• illustrate the distribution of cloud computing articles in different In this stage, researchers evaluated all 27 categories which were
journal disciplines. developed by the coders in previous stage and decreased the final
category to 10 themes. Table 2 lists the final theme categories.
Each theme is listed respectively with the related description:

2.4. Determining the category scheme 1. “Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing” category
contains articles which investigate the definition, education
In content analysis, the central idea is the identification of the and development of cloud computing by emphasizing what a
categories. In this study, a new category structure was devel- cloud computing is.
oped specifically for this research. Two coders, an instructor and 2. “Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing” category includes
master’s student in the department of Management Information articles which aim to outline the benefits and drawbacks of
Systems, were trained to analyze the list of themes. The coders cloud computing. Mostly system integrity, data integrity, reli-
independently aggregated the 236 articles into a smaller number of ability and robustness are examined in these articles.
categories. They were trained to group the articles that were related 3. “Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing” category contains
in scope and create whatever number of categories they wished. articles which examine the architectural design and services
The master student generated 15 categories, while the instructor of cloud computing like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS solutions.
generated 12 categories. As a result, 27 categories were collected 4. “Cloud Computing Adoption” contains articles that study how to
from coders at this stage. adapt the cloud computing to current business solutions.
 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644 639

Fig. 2. Number of articles per year.

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

5. “Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing” includes arti- Table 3

The percentage agreement of judges.
cles which investigate the privacy and security problems, policy
implications and ethical issues of cloud usage for organizations Judges Number of Matching (out of 236) Percent Matching
and individual cloud users. Additionally, articles which exam- A and B 215 91%
ine the current laws and regulations about cloud computing
Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.
usage are also included in this category.
6. “Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing” contains arti-
cles about the organizational and managerial perspectives and
issues of cloud computing. category when there are 10 categories, can be calculated by using
7. “Economic Dimension of Cloud Computing” includes articles the formula for a binomial probability. This formula is:
which examine the cost efficiency and financial benefits or
drawbacks of cloud computing in comparison with current
P (k successes) = [N!/(k! × (N − k)!)] × [pk × (1 − p)N−k ]
infrastructure solutions.
8. “Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors” contains
articles which investigate the effect of cloud computing on dif- When this formula is applied, the probability that two judges will
ferent sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, assign a theme to the same category by chance will be p = 1/10 = 0.1
education, government, library etc. and N = 236 themes, the probabilities of 215 matches can be repre-
9. “Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications” contains articles that sented as follow:
analyze the relationship of cloud and mobile applications while
the global trend shifts to mobile. Judges A and B : P(215) = [236!/(215! × 21!)] × [(1/10)236 ×
10. “Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing” contains
(9/10)21 ] = 5.8043 × 10−208
articles that analyze the fast growth of computer power con-
sumption, energy-efficient computing, and the energy use of
cloud systems.
Two judges achieved a satisfactory level of interjudge relia-
bility of 91% and that exceeded the 85% coefficient agreement
recommended by Kassarjian (1977). The percentage agreement for
reliability usually receives criticism from several researches due to
2.6. Reliability analysis its inadequacy (Grayson & Rust, 2001; Rust & Cooil, 1994). The rea-
son for this criticism is that “simply using percentage agreement
Reliability is crucial to determine the quality of the research. between judges is not so good because some agreement is sure to
According to Neuendorf (2002, p. 10) at least two judges should be occur, if only by change, and the fewer the number of categories,
used when human coders are used in content analysis. In this study, the more random agreement is likely to occur, thus making the
reliability analysis was conducted with judges to place the 236 arti- reliability appear better than it really is” (Grayson & Rust, 2011, p.
cles into same categories. Two judges worked independently and 71). Therefore, for the robustness of reliability of this study, Cohen’s
assigned each article to one of the 10 theme categories that fit best kappa is calculated:
to its content. Each article is placed only in one theme category. Percent of overall agreement Po: 0.911015.
A number of different measures can be used to examine the Fixed-marginal kappa: 0.898911.
agreement that is achieved by judges. Percentage match is one way Free-marginal kappa: 0.901128.
to identify the reliability. The agreement level between the two If the result of Cohen’s kappa are closer to 1, that indicates a
judges was determined by calculating the number of themes that higher agreement between the judges. Therefore, the results of reli-
were assigned to the same category. ability analysis indicated that the categories were clearly be defined
Table 3 shows the pair wise judgement percentage agreements. and can be used in the study with little or no ambiguity. The results
According to Zimmer and Golden (1988, p. 292), the probability of the article theme analysis are presented in category level and
by chance alone of two judges assigning 236 themes to the same explained in the following section.
640 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

Energy Consumption
Cloud Computing
Dimension of Cloud
Adoption 19%
Computing 4%
Benefits &
Challenges of Cloud Legal & Ethical
Computing 5% Dimension of Cloud
Computing 15%

Economic Dimension
of Cloud Computing
6%

Cloud Computing for

Mobile Applications
6%
Conceptualization &
Organizational Evolution of Cloud
Dimension of Cloud Computing 14%
Computing 8%
Application of Technical Dimension
Cloud Computing in of Cloud Computing
Different Sectors 10% 13%

Fig. 3. Percentage of articles by theme.

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

Table 4 Table 5
Number of articles per year. Number of articles per theme.

Year Count of Article Theme Frequency % of Article

of Article
2009 11
2010 29 Cloud Computing Adoption 45 19%
2011 24 Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing 36 15%
2012 49 Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing 32 14%
2013 61 Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing 30 13%
2014 62 Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors 25 10%
Total 236 Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing 20 8%
Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications 15 6%
Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.
Economic Dimension of Cloud Computing 14 6%
Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing 11 5%
Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing 9 4%
3. Research findings Grand Total 236 100%

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

The results of the research over the past six years are illustrated
in Fig. 2 which shows the number of articles that were published in
each year. Over the 236 articles, 11 articles were published in 2009 in the literature. Finally, “Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing”
as a start. In 2010, there was a great increase that the total number of (5%) and “Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing” (4%)
articles reached to 29. One year later, a short fall happened in 2011 are the least attention-grabbing themes in the literature. Table 5
with 24 articles. In 2012, the article number changed significantly shows the detailed information of Fig. 3 with the total article num-
and achieved 49. Nevertheless, most of the researches were done in bers per themes.
2013 and 2014 with 61 and 62 articles respectively. Table 4 shows Table 6 illustrates the frequency of articles that were classified
the change of article numbers per year. It is evident that in recent into ten theme categories for each year to identify the possible
years the amount of research increased significantly. change and trends. In 2009, “Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud
Computing” category was the most analyzed title with the number
3.1. Theme analysis of 5 over 11 total articles. Because the cloud computing concept
was newly introduced, this result was expected. Most of research
The results of the theme analysis are illustrated Fig. 3 with were related with the definition, evolution and clarification of the
respect to the ten different theme categories. The figure shows the cloud computing concept. In 2010, “Conceptualization & Evolution of
percentage of articles by themes for 236 articles. It is comprehen- Cloud Computing” and “Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Comput-
sible that, “Cloud Computing Adoption” (19%) and “Legal & Ethical ing” were the mostly studied topics whit having 10 and 7 articles
Dimension of Cloud Computing” (15%) have been prevalent themes respectively over 29 total articles. While the evolution of cloud
over the six years. Besides, “Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud usage continued, researchers started to examine the privacy and
Computing” (14%) and “Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing” security issues of cloud computing.
(13%) themes nearly catch the leader themes among 236 articles. After two years, researchers understood the new concept of the
Although, “Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors” (10%) cloud and started to seek how to adopt their solutions to cloud com-
and “Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing” (8%) themes puting. Therefore in 2011, the leading theme category was “Cloud
do not have significant effect rather than first four themes, there Computing Adoption” with 6 articles over 24 total articles. In 2012,
are incontrovertible number of articles in these categories. Mean- adoption of cloud computing was extended to different sectors and
while, “Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications” (6%) and “Economic new case studies were published whereby 7 articles over 24 were
Dimension of Cloud Computing” (6%) are also equally studied themes categorized under “Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sec-
 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644 641

Table 6
Theme analysis of 236 articles for each year.

Theme 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total

Cloud Computing Adoption 0 2 6 7 15 15 45

Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing 0 7 4 6 10 9 36
Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing 5 10 4 8 3 2 32
Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing 3 1 3 8 5 10 30
Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors 1 1 1 7 8 6 24
Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing 1 2 2 5 6 4 20
Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications 0 0 1 1 6 7 15
Economic Dimension of Cloud Computing 0 4 2 3 3 2 14
Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing 1 1 1 3 1 4 11
Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing 0 1 0 1 4 3 9
Grand Total 11 29 24 49 61 62 236

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

tors” theme. Although cloud computing adoption and application Finally, there was a smooth flow for “Economic Dimension of
of cloud computing in different sectors themes had a huge portion Cloud Computing” and “Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing”
of the total articles, “Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Comput- themes that number of articles were close for each year.
ing” and “Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing” categories lead
the research themes with 8 articles each over 49 total articles.
3.2. Journal analysis
In 2013, “Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing” and
“Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing” themes increased
The results of the journal analysis over the past six years are
significantly with 10 and 6 articles respectively over 61 total arti-
illustrated in Fig. 6 which shows the number of articles that were
cles. Even so, “Cloud Computing Adoption” was the prevalent
published in each journal. This figure only contains the journals
research theme in all categories with 15 articles over 61 total arti-
that published more than two articles about cloud computing. The
cles. During 2013 and 2014, there was a significant increase for
rest of the journals which publish equal or less than two articles
“Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications” and “Energy Consump-
were grouped into one group and named as “Other”. According to
tion Dimension of Cloud Computing” themes and these topics were
the journal analysis results; “IT Professional Magazine” and “Inter-
started to be analyzed by researchers. Nevertheless, the “Cloud
national Journal of Information Management” journals published 19
Computing Adoption” theme was not affected negatively from
and 12 articles respectively during 2009–2014 and reach to highest
these new concepts and still be the most studied theme with 15
share among 236 articles. Furthermore, “Mobile Networks and Appli-
articles over 62 total articles in 2014. “Technical Dimension of Cloud
cations”, “Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of
Computing” theme followed the cloud computing adoption with 10
ACM” and “The Computer Journal” journals shared third place in the
articles in 2014. These trends of themes can be examined deeply in
list with 8 articles each.
Fig. 4.
Table 7 illustrates the number of articles in detail that were pub-
Fig. 5 illustrates the change of each theme over time. “Cloud Com-
lished in each journal over the six years. Even though “IT Professional
puting Adoption” had a great climb up between 2009 and 2014 years.
Magazine” is the first journal that gave a place to cloud comput-
Plenty of case studies were conducted to investigate the cloud com-
ing research, it is seen that in recent years, “International Journal of
puting adoption; hence this theme became so popular in academic
Information Management” and “Mobile Networks and Applications”
research and continued its increase. The result was a little bit differ-
are the two journals that heavily concentrated on cloud computing
ent in “Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing” that, in 2009
research.
and 2010 there was a flow up, but in 2011 it witnessed a flow down
because researchers ignored privacy and security issues and most
of the studies were still conducted about cloud computing adop- 4. Discussion and conclusion
tion. In 2012, it started to get attraction from researchers again and
continued its increase during 2013–2014. The evolution of computing platforms over the last 50 years has
Although “Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing” been dramatic. Most recently this evolution has seen a shift from
was the most popular theme in 2009, it started to decrease over Enterprise to Cloud computing which has been reflecting business
six years. This result was expected because cloud users learned needs (Himanshu, 2014; Laudon & Laudon, 2014; Wang, 2013).
clearly what a cloud is, and started to change their research scope to Wang (2013) contended that cloud computing has achieved great
cloud computing solutions. Hence, there was a significant increase progress in recent years and it is expected to continue its growth.
in “Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing”, “Application of Cloud Furthermore, some scholars assert that cloud computing provides a
Computing in Different Sectors” and “Organizational Dimension of paradigm shift of business and IT infrastructure (Himanshu, 2014;
Cloud Computing” themes over six years. The trend changed from Rimal et al., 2011). However, there are several issues related with
concept and evolution of cloud computing to how to use cloud cloud computing, and Singh, Mishra, Ahmad, Sagar, and Chaudhary
computing and how to adapt the cloud models to current solutions. (2012) summarized these issues as security, privacy, reliability,
Since 2013, the global trend shifts to mobile applications and legal issues, open standard, compliance, freedom, and long-term
green computing. Thus, there was a remarkable increase for “Cloud viability. It is not only the business world that concentrates on
Computing for Mobile Applications” and “Energy Consumption Dimen- cloud computing but also the academic world pays great attention
sion in Cloud Computing” themes during 2013 and 2014. It is to this hot topic. There is a growing body of literature and diversified
inevitable that, future cloud computing research will have to research topics about cloud computing; therefore, it will be benefi-
include these topics to chase the new trends. cial to have an in-depth analysis of vast amount of papers published
up to now. The purpose of our study is to identify the trends and
patterns of cloud computing over time and shed light to the future
642 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Cloud Computing Adoption 2 6 7 15 15

Legal & Ethical Dimension of Cloud Computing 7 4 6 10 9

Conceptualization & Evolution of Cloud Computing 5 10 4 8 3 2

Technical Dimension of Cloud Computing 3 1 3 8 5 10

Application of Cloud Computing in Different Sectors 111 7 8 6

Organizational Dimension of Cloud Computing 1 2 2 5 6 4

Cloud Computing for Mobile Applications 11 6 7

Economic Dimension of Cloud Computing 4 2 3 3 2

Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Computing 111 3 1 4

Energy Consumption Dimension of Cloud Computing 11 4 3

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Fig. 4. Theme analysis of 236 articles over years.

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

16
15 15 Cloud Computing Adoption
14
Legal & Ethical Dimension of
Cloud Computing
12 Conceptualization & Evolution
of Cloud Computing

10 10 10 10 Technical Dimension of Cloud

Computing
9 Application of Cloud
8 8 8 Computing in Different Sectors

7 7 7 Organizational Dimension of
Cloud Computing
6 6 6 6 6
Cloud Computing for Mobile
5 5 5 Applications
4 4 4 4 4 Economic Dimension of Cloud
Computing
3 3 3 3 3
Benefits & Challenges of Cloud
2 2 2 2 Computing
1 1 1 1 1 Energy Consumption
Dimension of Cloud Computing
0 0 0 0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Fig. 5. Change and trend analysis of themes over years.

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

of cloud computing research. The content of articles, which were the last three years, cloud users started to seek how to use cloud
published in academic journals, were analyzed to understand the computing rather than understanding what cloud computing is.
benefits, challenges and risks of cloud computing. Review of these Since the 2000s, researchers have examined cloud computing
articles provides the necessary outputs to see the change in cloud delivery models and investigated the benefits and risks of cloud
computing usage. usage. Most of the researchers agreed that cloud computing creates
In initial years, researchers were curious about the defini- a significant benefit to organizations for cost reduction. Accord-
tion and development of cloud computing and investigated how ing to the European Commission’s survey in 2011, the adoption of
the new computing infrastructure could be applied to current cloud computing has enabled 80% of organizations to reduce costs
solutions. During the first three years, most of the articles were by 10–20% (European Commission, 2012). On the other hand, some
concentrated on the conceptualization and evolution of cloud com- researchers were against it. According to the successfully imple-
puting. This can be considered as the dawn of cloud computing to mented cloud solutions, cloud computing could be more expensive
enlighten all users. When the definition became clear, the techni- in the short-term because building a high speed Internet infras-
cal dimensions of cloud computing like architectural designs and tructure was not easy to handle. According to an online survey that
services started to be analyzed deeply. Some of the academic arti- Forrester and Juniper Networks conducted in 2012, 58% of the com-
cles gave information about IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions. Thus, for panies who joined the survey indicated that cloud services had to
 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644 643

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

Other 119
IT Professional Magazine 19
Inter. Jour. of Information Management 12
Mobile Networks and Applications 8
The Computer Journal 8
Communications of the ACM 8
Journal of Network and Systems Management 6
Inter. Jour. of Management and Information Systems 5
Computing. Archives for Informatics and Numerical… 4
Journal of Computer Science and Technology 4
Journal of Enterprise Information Management 4
Inter. Jour. of Innovation, Management and Technology 4
EDUCAUSE Review 4
Information Systems Frontiers 4
Inter. Jour. of Business and Social Science 3
Transactions in GIS 3
Computer Networks 3
Communications of the IBIMA 3
Strategy & Leadership 3
OCLC Systems & Services 3
Inter. Jour. of Parallel Programming 3
The Journal of Systems and Software 3
Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy 3

Total

Fig. 6. Number of articles per journal.

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

Table 7
Journal analysis of 236 articles for each year.

Journal 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total

IT Professional Magazine 5 5 1 2 4 2 19
Inter. Jour. of Information Management 0 1 0 1 4 6 12
Mobile Networks and Applications 0 0 1 0 3 4 8
Communications of the ACM 1 4 1 1 0 1 8
The Computer Journal 0 1 1 1 0 5 8
Journal of Network and Systems Management 0 0 1 2 1 2 6
Inter. Jour. of Management and Information Systems 0 2 1 2 0 0 5
Computing. Archives for Informatics and Numerical Computation 0 0 1 0 2 1 4
Journal of Enterprise Information Management 0 3 0 0 1 0 4
EDUCAUSE Review 3 1 0 0 0 0 4
Information Systems Frontiers 0 0 0 2 0 2 4
Inter. Jour. of Innovation, Management & Technology 0 0 0 2 2 0 4
Journal of Computer Science and Technology 0 1 0 1 0 2 4
Transactions in GIS 0 0 1 1 0 1 3
Inter. Jour. of Parallel Programming 0 0 0 0 0 3 3
Inter. Jour. of Business and Social Science 0 0 0 1 0 2 3
Computer Networks 0 0 0 0 0 3 3
The Journal of Systems and Software 0 0 0 0 3 0 3
OCLC Systems & Services 0 1 0 0 2 0 3
Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy 0 2 0 0 0 1 3
Communications of the IBIMA 0 0 1 0 2 0 3
Strategy & Leadership 0 1 0 2 0 0 3
Other 2 7 15 31 37 27 119
Total 11 29 24 49 61 62 236

Source: Based on our investigation in ABI/INFORM and Emerald Databases.

upgrade their networking hardware (Hesseldahl, 2012). Although of the potential cloud users prefer well-established and large com-
cost efficiency affects the cloud computing adoption positively in panies as a cloud provider like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM
the long-term decisions, organizations should also investigate their etc. However, loss of privacy is not only a problem for organiza-
short-term returns to decide if their investment is acceptable for tions; individuals can also be a victim of the cloud cyber-attack.
the company. Because of these reasons, a significant number of the The most recent example of this is the hack of Apple’s Cloud ser-
academic researches mentioned the economic and organizational vices which leaked out user’s personal photographs to the public in
dimensions of cloud computing. 2014. In addition, Amazon Web Services have gone down several
Furthermore, over the six years articles were highly concen- times because of an attacker and Dropbox’s sharing services were
trated on the legal and ethical dimension of cloud computing. hacked because of a security hole (Neumann, 2014, p. 26). These are
Sharing an organization’s private data with third parties would be some examples which indicate why some of the researchers con-
crucial for cloud usage. In some circumstances, cloud consumers centrate on the investigation of privacy, security, laws, regulations,
even might not be informed that the confidential documents have related policy implications and ethical issues of cloud computing
been released. Because of these leakage possibilities in cloud, most in their articles.
644 M. Bayramusta, V.A. Nasir / International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 635–644

Although there were so many researches during 2009–2014 Leiner, B. M., Cerf, V. C., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., et al.
about different dimensions of cloud computing (like evolution, (1997). The past and future history of the Internet. Communication ACM, 40(2),
102–108.
technical, legal, economic), the maximum number of researches Naghavi, M. (2012). Cloud computing as an innovation in GIS & SDI:
were concentrated on cloud computing adoption. As a first step of methodologies, services, issues and deployment techniques. Journal of
adoption, organizations had to note the risks of cloud usage and Geographic Information System, 4(6), 597–607.
Nasir, S. (2005). The development, change, and transformation of Management
decide wisely to achieve a successful adoption process. Therefore, Information Systems (MIS): a content analysis of articles published in business
organizations started to analyze the ways of adopting the cloud and marketing journals. International Journal of Information Management, 25(5),
computing model in their current solutions. After this adoption pro- 442–457.
Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
cess, systems should continue giving access smoothly to its users.
Neumann, P. G. (2014). Inside risks: risks and myths of cloud computing and cloud
These reasons indicated why most of the researchers examined the storage. Association for Computing Machinery Communications of the ACM,
cloud computing adoption in their articles. 57(10), 25–27.
Oracle. (2012). Cloud reference architecture. oracle enterprise transformation
Apart from this theme analysis over cloud computing, journal
solutions series-oracle white paper. (November) Retrieved from. http://www.
analysis also contributed to make inferences about the future of oracle.com/technetwork/topics/entarch/oracle-wp-cloud-ref-arch-1883533.
cloud computing articles. According to the results, mainly com- pdf
puter technology, engineering and related journals focus on cloud Rimal, B. P., Jukan, A., Katsaros, D., & Goeleven, Y. (2011). Architectural
requirements for cloud computing systems: an enterprise cloud approach.
computing research. The research established there is a shortage of Journal of Grid Computing, 9, 3–26.
articles published in business journals which needs to be rectified. Rust, R., & Cooil, B. (1994). Reliability measures for qualitative data: theory and
In conclusion, the results of the content analysis indicated the implications. Journal of Marketing Research, 31(1), 1–14.
Singh, A. K., Mishra, R., Ahmad, F., Sagar, R. K., & Chaudhary, A. K. (2012). A review
trends and patterns of cloud computing during 2009–2014 and in of cloud computing open architecture and its security issues. International
the future, these academic researches may help cloud computing to Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 1(6), 65–67.
reach its maturity level. However, this study has a limitation in that Sultan, N. (2013). Cloud computing: a democratizing force? International Journal of
Information Management, 33(5), 810–815.
we obtained articles by using only two mainstream databases. The Toigo, J. (2009). Storage in the cloud. Informationweek, 33–45.
research would be enhanced by expanding the number of databases UXC Connect. (2014). Cloud is not bureau: welcome to choice by steve McCarthy..
accessed. Retrieved from. http://www.uxcconnect.com.au/cloud-first/cloud-is-not-
bureau-welcome-to-
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Merve Bayramusta received her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from
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tems from Bogazici University. She also works at Siemens AS, Corporate Technology,
2074815
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