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I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. (Richard Feynman)
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According to the Gartner’s Hype Cycle for cloud computing 2019 report, companies are moving from the “inflated expectation phase” towards the “enlightenment and productivity phase” for cloud-related technologies (Smith & Anderson, 2019). In the inflated expectation phase many companies experienced a pre-matured adoption, majorly because of lack of understanding of its business value and security threats. Research on Cloud Computing has matured beyond the technical development phase towards planning business-aligned cloud strategies. It emerges from the long-promised vision of utility computing and benefits from developments in computing power, data transmission speed, and mobile and internet communications (Armbrust et al., 2010; Venters & Whitley, 2012). Essential characteristics, service, and deployment models distinguish various definitions of cloud computing, the most popular of which is from the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA), which defines it as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” (Mell & Grance, 2011). As a sourcing strategy, cloud computing is a form of outsourced shared-resource computing service leveraging a variety of service models—e.g., software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS) (Durkee, 2010; Zhang et al., 2020). Gartner's latest projection indicates a 21.7% growth in global end-user spending on public cloud services, surging to $597.3 billion in 2023 from $491 billion in 2022 (Stamford, 2023). The tremendous growth of cloud computing is based on its transformative value in helping to reduce upfront IT infrastructure costs, democratizing storage and computing services, and supporting business innovation (Joe-Wong & Sen, 2018). Like every technology, research moves from the discovery of characteristics to leveraging them for smooth adoption. However, the disruptive nature of innovation can impede effective IT governance and business impacts. On-demand network access and scalable IT resources are redefining traditional governance practices with transformative sourcing strategies (Venters & Whitley, 2012).
Research during the last decade has transitioned from seeking to understand cloud computing to exploring the effects of cloud computing on various business functions (Benlian et al., 2018; Breznitz et al., 2018; Fahmideh et al., 2019; Guo et al., 2019; Hosseini et al., 2020). Business researchers have offered a number of cloud research curations both from a descriptive general overview (Bayramusta & Nasir, 2016; Hoberg et al., 2012) and in terms of a specified business perspective (Salleh et al., 2018; Wulf et al., 2019). However, most of the existing review studies have not been able to provide a comprehensive classification of the studies because (a) the reviews predate some of the significant developments in the literature and (b) they use empirical analysis such as content analysis, which lacks a contextual in-depth understanding and sense-making. In this review, the authors position articles based on their exhaustive exploration of the major and minor contributions of the 101 articles included here. They develop and extend classifications established by previous reviews to situate articles at the intersection of various cloud parameters (i.e., subdimensions). Their review upgrades and strengthens previous research curations (Behrend et al., 2011; Iyer & Henderson, 2010; Janssen & Joha, 2011; Saya et al., 2010; Venters & Whitley, 2012) in that it goes beyond mere explanation of cloud parameters and clarifies the interplay between them.