Proceedings of the 1st IAIS Workshop on Cloud Computing Research

Cloud computing has built its foundations on decades of research in virtualisation, distributed computing, utility computing, networking and more recently web and software services. It represents a shift to computing as a service (hardware and software) that is delivered to users over the internet via large scale data centres. Indeed it facilitates a fundamental change in how information technology is provisioned in that it enables computing facilities such as storage compute power, network infrastructure and applications to be delivered as a metred service like a utility. Information technology research and advisory company Gartner has forecasted the public cloud services market to grow 18.5% in 2013 to a global $131 billion.The forthcoming years will be a crucial period for the development of cloud computing. Recently, cloud computing has become a strategic direction for the Irish government and its associated agencies. In November 2011, the Irish government launched the Public Service Reform Plans, which contained commitments to cloud computing and shared services. Specifically the reform plans outlined a commitment to maximise new and innovative service delivery channels through: piloting the use of cloud computing in 2012 and evaluation of a roll-out across the public service. In February 2012, the Irish government unveiled its first cloud computing initiative Cloud4Gov. However, while cloud computing is growing in global popularity at a phenomenal pace, academic research is lagging behind the rapid developments in the field. Given the rapidly evolving nature of this nascent paradigm, the role of Information System (IS) researchers is crucial. In order for organisations to leverage the propitious capabilities associated with cloud computing, it is imperative from the outset that IS researchers are proactively involved in every discussion regarding the paradigm. To that extent the 1st IAIS Workshop on Cloud Computing Research will provide a current snapshot of emerging research in cloud computing, capturing both national and international submissions. The workshop is supported by the Irish chapter of the Association for Information Systems (IAIS), the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (Lero) and NUI Galways Whitaker Institute, and is being jointly delivered by the Business Information Systems discipline and Lero at NUI Galway, and the Cloud Computing Services Innovation Centre at Hewlett- Packard.