THE FUTURE OF CLOUD COMPUTING AT DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES AN EXPLORATORY STUDY TO THE OPPORTUNITIES OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES IN THE PROVINCE GRONINGEN.

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THE FUTURE OF CLOUD COMPUTING AT DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY TO THE OPPORTUNITIES OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR DUTCH

MUNICIPALITIES IN THE PROVINCE GRONINGEN.

A research performed at Logica Groningen

Master Thesis Business & ICT Faculty of Business Administration

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THE FUTURE OF CLOUD COMPUTING AT DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY TO THE OPPORTUNITIES OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES IN THE PROVINCE GRONINGEN.

Author

Name: C.J. van Dijk

Student number: S1878808 E-mail: Jorndijk@hotmail.com Address: Billitonstraat 20 A 9715 ES Groningen The Netherlands University of Groningen

Faculty: Business Administration Master: Business & ICT

Supervisor: Dr. D. Seo E-mail: D.Seo@rug.nl Co-assessor: Dr. C.W. Tan E-mail: C.W.Tan@rug.nl Address: Netelbosje 2 9747 AE Groningen The Netherlands Logica Groningen

Content supervisor: Hetty Wessel

E-mail: Hetty.Wessel@logica.com Procedure supervisor: Margriet Meerholz

E-mail: Margriet.Meerholz@logica.com Scientific supervisor: Jacob Mulder

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I

Preface

The last six months I have been working to deliver this master thesis in order to finish my master ‘Business and ICT’ at the faculty of Business Administration at the University of Groningen. Logica Groningen provided me the opportunity to perform this research in their graduation program ‘Working Tomorrow’. I have performed this research during the period February 2011 until July 2011. During this research process I have received a lot of support and help from the employees of Logica and at the municipalities in the province of Groningen. I would like to thank all of them for their cooperation, tips and comments. I’m able to present this report because of their cooperation by means of interviews and discussions. Moreover, I will give some persons an individual word of thanks.

First of all the one who was always prepared to have a discussion about my thoughts, theories, research approach and conclusions. Hetty Wessel; I really appreciated the way you challenged me to think and reconsider everything I wrote down or thought. Without you, the report would not have been to the point, relevant and concrete.

Margriet Meerholz, I want to thank you as well for your on-going supportive support. You were always willing to assist, to give comments and to review. Thanks for the pleasant time at Logica. The same thanks are counting for Jacob Mulder. You’re a living encyclopaedia about IT, clouds and security. You have really supported me with the many ideas you have, the enlightening explanations and all the comments you have made. Without your help, the report would have had a lack of IT content and academic foundation.

Furthermore I would like to thank my supervisor DongBack Seo from the university of Groningen for her support during this master thesis. DongBack Seo was always prepared to give me feedback and tips. And she was always able to encourage me to find better ways to perform my research.

Writing this master thesis was an unique opportunity that has given me more insight into the challenges of doing proper research. And performing this research expanded my knowledge and gave me the experience of connecting scientific theories to research findings and to come to well founded conclusions.

Please enjoy reading this master thesis. Jorn van Dijk

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II

Abstract

The research is about the possible contribution of cloud computing at Dutch municipalities. The theoretical foundation is composed out of literature review and interviews with IT managers at 8 municipalities and 6 interviews with experts in the field of security, cloud computing and public sectors. The collected data indicates that several internal- and general aspects appear as barriers for municipalities to adopt cloud computing. The internal context of the organization provides insufficient foundation for adopting cloud computing. Besides, the general context barriers (legal, political and economic) are also restricting the adoption of cloud computing at municipalities. The barriers could be solved when the Dutch government, in cooperation with suppliers, initiate the cloud services for supporting processes like E-mail and storage.

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III

Management summary

The Netherlands consists out of 418 municipalities divided over 12 provinces. The organization of municipalities has some unique features, like the corresponding processes and the lack of substitutes and competition. The current economic situation in the Netherlands requires that the public sector, including municipalities, needs to cut costs too.

Cloud computing is a relatively new and unexplored technology and would be an appropriate technology for municipalities with proposed advantages as higher scalability, cost savings, more flexibility, more green IT and increased time to market.

The Dutch government and the European Union recognize the potential benefits of cloud computing for the public sector. The Dutch government decided to adopt a closed governmental cloud and the European Union decided to develop a European cloud strategy.

Though, the point of view of the municipalities, representing a large market, regarding cloud computing is not yet comprehensively studied. The research question of this research was formulated as:

In what way can cloud computing contribute to the IT strategy of municipalities?

Literature research and interviews were done to come to a solid and properly substantiated theoretical- and empirical foundation for answering the research question. 8 interviews were held with IT managers at municipalities in the province Groningen. The interviewed municipalities differed in size from small organizations, shared services centers to large organizations. The interviews with the experts were about different topics such as cloud computing, security and the organization structure of the public sector.

The findings have shown that municipalities are interested in the opportunities of cloud computing, although they experience several barriers. These barriers could be categorized as internal and general (macro) barriers.

The internal barriers concerns aspects as the finances, the culture, the technology and the people of the municipalities. The municipalities are not yet aware of the financial benefits of cloud computing. They recognize the advantage of the shift from capital investments to operational costs. However the organization is too small to gain enough negotiating power to come to the right agreements with the cloud suppliers. The capacity of the IT employees depends on the culture and structure of the organization. Small organizations don’t have the capacity to specialise their IT employees for future technologies. This results in unawareness of the exact degree of maturity among municipalities what will result in a discouraging attitude towards new technologies. The municipalities are not yet convinced of the right security- and reliability levels.

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influencing the adoption of cloud computing at municipalities. IT managers are not fully aware of the legal opportunities and restrictions, this works as barrier. Besides that is the current critical economic situation of the public sector pressing on the budgets of municipalities. Municipalities are not able to easily free budgets to invest in new technologies such as cloud computing. The political environment is always influencing the IT strategy of municipalities. The decision of the Dutch government to adopt a closed governmental cloud for national services will positively influence the conception at municipality level.

The mentioned barriers could be solved if the Dutch government, in cooperation with enabling IT suppliers, would initiate the development and maintenance of supporting cloud services. The Dutch government, representing all the municipalities, can gain enough negotiating power to come to the right agreements with suppliers. And because of the scale of economies is it possible to offer the services for low prices. The Dutch government takes the legal barriers of the municipalities away and could offer the services within the legal restrictions.

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IV

List of abbreviations

CAPEX Capital Expenditures

CRM Customer Relation Management

CBS Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek

Central Bureau of Statistics

EU European Union

DAL Delfzijl, Appingedam, Loppersum

Gov Cloud Governmental Cloud

G2B Government 2 Business

G2C Government 2 Citizen / Customer

G2E Government 2 Employee

G2G Government 2 Government

GBA Gemeenschappelijk Basis Administratie

(General Basis Administration)

ICT Information Communication Technology IT Information Technology

KING Kwaliteitsinstituut Nederlandse Gemeenten (Quality Institute of Dutch Municipalities)

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology

OPEX Operating Expenditures

ROI Return On Investment

RVD Rijksvoorlichting Dienst

National Information supply department

SLA Service Level Agreements SME Small Medium Enterprise(s) SOZAWE Sociale Zaken & Werkgelegenheid

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V

1. Introduction

Cloud computing is for some a hype and others are seeing it as a revolution and for some is cloud computing just part of the IT evolution. Right now, cloud computing is an actual and often discussed topic. Cloud computing is used and appreciated very well by commercial organization because of several functional benefits and costs savings. The emerging appreciating and use in the commercial sector convinced the Dutch government and the European Commission to study to the opportunities of cloud computing. Recently, the Dutch government decided to adopt a closed government cloud in their ICT strategy.

The mentioned studies are elaborated at national and European level but not yet at the level of the municipalities. While there are 418 municipalities in the Netherlands with unique features, the same business processes, no competition between municipalities like commercial companies experience and there are no substitutes. Because of those unique aspects, cloud computing could be an appropriate technology for municipalities.

The main research question during this research is formulated as: In what way can cloud computing contribute to the IT strategy of municipalities?

This main research question will be answered by means of several sub questions. - What is cloud computing?

- What is the role of IT at municipalities?

- How is the current conception regarding cloud computing at municipalities? - What is/could be the role of cloud computing at municipalities?

Cloud computing has still an immature image and has to prove to be reliable, secure and cheaper than the traditional ‘on premise’ computing. Municipalities are anxious to invest in unproven, unreliable and expensive projects since the current financial adverse situation of public organizations. Besides that, municipalities are dealing with privacy sensitive data that needs a secure IT environment.

Advantages of cloud computing could be the increase in flexibility and scalability and costs savings. And perhaps, cloud computing could be the facilitating technology for a more standardized IT environment for the 418 Dutch municipalities.

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2. Literature review

The literature review part consists out of four parts.

First part will explain the technology cloud computing, hereby the emphasize will be on the definition, characteristics and further important aspects. Thereafter the evolution of cloud computing will be explained to gain a clear view on the position of the technology compared to previous technologies. Then, the literature concerning E-government and governmental clouds will be reviewed. E-government is an important aspect of municipalities and closely related to cloud computing. Some public organizations or nations already use governmental clouds, and the Dutch government decided to start using one. This is related to municipalities and will be valuable input for the research.

The literature review is a critical synthesis of previous research and will lead to the research question. The literature review is a mix of scientific articles, white papers, articles in magazines and some interviews or presentations.

2.1 Cloud computing

The literature of cloud computing will be reviewed in this chapter, this to provide a clear view on cloud computing. This review will be on the definition, terminology and characteristics of cloud computing.

This review is comprehensive since it is important to exactly know what is meant with cloud computing because cloud computing is the common thread of this thesis.

2.1.1 Definition

What exactly entails cloud computing and what part of cloud computing is relevant for this study? Right now, there is not one standard definition for cloud computing. For this research it is important to use one uniform definition, recognized by scientific organizations and commercial organization and applicable for public organizations.

Many authors have given their vision and definition about cloud technology. Some authors say it is not more than a network of computers who are sharing capacity via the internet. Others are saying that cloud computing is more an IT architecture style and some others see cloud as an extension of the grid technology. (Vaquero, Rodero-Merino, Caceres, & Lindner, 2009) Some articles are describing cloud computing as kind of virtual computing (Cervone, 2010) and some see cloud computing as extra layer above grid computing. (Foster, Zhao, Raicu, & Shiyong, 2008)

During a recent study (Vaquero, Rodero-Merino, Caceres, & Lindner, 2009) concerning the definition of cloud computing, more than 20 definitions were compared. After comparing those definitions the authors were not able to come to one common definition since there was not one denominator for each definition. The most common set of features were scalability, pay-per-use utility model and virtualization.

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comprehensive in this paragraph. The below given definitions are used by institutes, commercial parties or by scientific articles.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, storage, servers, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” (Mell & Grance, 2011)

European Commission

“A cloud is an elastic execution environment of resources involving multiple stakeholders and providing a metered service at multiple granularities for a specified level of quality (of service).” (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

KPMG

“Cloud computing refers to hosted online services. These services are accessed via the internet, which is metaphorically depicted as a ‘cloud’. Cloud computing has the following main characteristics: Multi-tenancy, rented service delivery model, on-demand usage/flexibility and external data storage. Cloud computing offers services on various IT layers: software layer (SaaS), Platform layer (PaaS) and on the Infrastructure layer (IaaS)”. (Hermans & Chung, 2010)

Logica

“Cloud is a set of solutions, from computing and software to business processes and collaboration tools, delivered as a flexible pay-per-use service. Cloud is about sharing and connecting to enable business transformation and drive economic growth. Companies are already using it to reduce costs and time to market, and improve their customers’ experience.” (Logica, 2010)

McKinsey & Company

“Clouds are hardware-based services offering compute, network and storage capacity where: Hardware management is highly abstracted from the buyer and buyers incur infrastructure costs as variable OPEX and were infrastructure capacity is highly elastic (up or down).” (Forrest, 2009)

Kwaliteits Instituut Nederlandse Gemeenten (KING)

“Cloud computing is the availability on request of services, software and infrastructure by a broadband network. The cloud stands for the broadband network and the parts and activities of the applications that are not executed at the personal computer of the user. With cloud computing the customer determines which services are used and the customer only pays for the actual usage.” (Quanjer, 2011)

Article: A Break in the Clouds: Towards a Cloud Definition. This is definition is proposed out of an analysis of 22+ articles.

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typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means of customized SLAs.” (Vaquero, Rodero-Merino, Caceres, & Lindner, 2009)

For this research the definition of cloud computing, adopted by the European Commission and described in the Cordis’ paper ‘the Future of Cloud Computing’, is chosen to be the definition to use during this study. This paper defines cloud computing as: “A cloud is an elastic execution environment of resources involving multiple stakeholders and providing a metered service at multiple granularities for a specified level of quality (of service).” (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010) This definition is chosen since it contains the four characteristics that are mentioned by most parties and because the definition is defined clear. Those four characteristics are: the elastic execution, the multiple stakeholders, the metered service and the specified level of quality. These characteristics are also recognized as ‘often mentioned cloud characteristic’ by the paper of Vaquero et al. (2009).

2.1.2 Terminology of cloud computing

The EU’ definition is extended with the figure below. Some of the cloud computing aspects will be elaborated in this paragraph to get a clear and comprehensive conception of cloud computing. Figure 1 does not explicitly contain the disadvantages/threats of cloud computing. Nevertheless, this important aspect will also be elaborated in this paragraph at several points.

The terminology of cloud types, deployment modes and stakeholders will be elaborated in this paragraph. Benefits and features will be elaborated in paragraph 2.1.3. The comparison to other technologies will be treated in paragraph 2.2. and the locality of cloud computing won’t be elaborated. Locality won’t be relevant for this research.

This paragraph will give a clear view on cloud computing and the different aspects related to cloud computing.

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A. Cloud types

Different types of cloud computing are offered on three various IT layers. These three layers are also recognized by the NIST. The exact descriptions of the NIST are used to describe the three IT layers. Software as a Service (SaaS)

The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. (Mell & Grance, 2011)

Example: Google Docs, Gmail, Salesforce CRM. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations. (Mell & Grance, 2011)

Example: Google App Engine, Windows Azzure, Amazon. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls). (Mell & Grance, 2011)

Example: Amazon S3, SQL Azure, Extension of cloud types

Youseff, Butrico, & Da Silva (2008) depict the different cloud types differently, see figure 2. In this figure is the number of cloud types extended with DaaS, CaaS, HaaS and a software kernel. This software kernel represents the physical servers that compose the cloud. And the bottom layer represent the actual physics of the cloud.

Figure 2 Cloud computing ontology (Youseff, Butrico, & Da Silva, 2008)

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B. Deployment models

There are five different kind of deployment models for cloud computing; the public-, private-, hybrid-, community- and special purpose cloud. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutzhybrid-, 2010) These five different models have different characteristics and different purposes.

Some articles or organizations distinguish four deployment models instead of the five mentioned by Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz (2010) The special purpose deployment model is often not included by several papers as one of the deployment models. (Mell & Grance, 2011) & (Quanjer, 2011)

Private

The private cloud is often used by just one organization. A high level of security and availability is required for the cloud infrastructure and the data in the cloud. A private cloud is frequently used for organization critical information. The responsibility of the maintenance of the cloud is at the using organization or at a third party. The using organization or the third party could own the own hardware. (Quanjer, 2011)

Example: Ebay Public

The public cloud is accessible for any organization or individual in the market. And users are using the services and can’t be the owner of the service or hardware. Providers of public clouds often pay less attention to security issues than providers of private clouds. Examples of a public cloud are Google Apps and Windows Azure. (Quanjer, 2011) The NIST describes the public cloud as follows: ”The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.” (Mell & Grance, 2011)

Example: Amazon, Google Apps, Windows Azure Hybrid

According to Mell and Grance (2011) is a hybrid cloud defined as follows. “The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).”

This is a well described definition but the Cordis’ paper add some remarks. An organization can choose for a hybrid cloud if an organization won’t lose control, what would be the case with the public cloud. By choosing for a hybrid cloud an organization would achieve a maximum of cost reduction through outsourcing to a cloud provider and meanwhile maintaining the desired degree of control. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

Example: Citrix, VMware. Community clouds

This form of cloud computing could be the answer for several organization which have the same requirements for the cloud. When bundling their power they could establish higher service and security levels. And it could force lower costs since the constant costs could be divided by several organizations.

This could become an interesting option for example SMEs who are operating in the same segment. Or for public organizations, like municipalities, with the same processes.

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Special purpose clouds

The reason for the existence of special purpose clouds is that the standard offered cloud service not fulfill the requirements for the user. Therefore, a special cloud could be designed with specialized functionalities or dedicated capabilities. Special purpose clouds could be seen as an extension of the normal, basic clouds. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

Example: Could be any cloud which is specific designed for a customer. C. Stakeholders

Stakeholders could be categorized in two different contexts, the competitive (micro)- and the general (macro) context. The micro context are stakeholders who directly influence the internal context. The macro context is the more general context what affects the micro context. See figure 3.

The importance of knowledge about stakeholders is something not to underestimate. Cloud computing could only work when people believe in the added value of cloud computing. When people, with sufficient influence, believe that the benefits of a certain system will exceed the (expected) costs of a system they will develop such a system. The benefits and costs could be unmeasured issues, it is not directly related to financial costs and benefits. (Boddy, Boonstra, & Kennedy, 2008)

Figure 3 Contexts of an information system (Boddy, Boonstra, & Kennedy, 2008)

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Suppliers

The definition suppliers in the field of cloud computing is too broad. Supplying could be done in any cloud type (SaaS/PaaS/IaaS) or deployment model (private/hybrid/public/etc.) Therefore a distinction is made for the different types of suppliers in the field of cloud computing. See table 1. In this research we will make the distinction between the different suppliers.

Kind of supplier: Supplies: By means of:

Cloud providers Offers clouds (IaaS and Paas). Dedicated APIs and virtual machines / resources .

Cloud service providers Cloud enhanced services (SaaS). Providing services. Cloud resellers and

aggregators

Aggregated cloud platforms or enhanced features. Community clouds. Cloud tool providers Supporting tools. Depends on kind of tool. Cloud adopters or vendors Own services and capabilities. Exploiting cloud platforms from

cloud providers and cloud resellers. Enablers Products/services that facilitate delivery, adoption

and use of cloud computing.

Consultancy / product delivery / providing skills

Regulators Regulates the other stakeholders. Law / regulations Table 1 (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010) and (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011)

Customers

The customer, consumer or user are effectively a kind of subscriber rather than a purchaser. The customer subscribes to a certain service and pays-per-use. Effective use of the potential benefits that clouds offer will alter the center of gravity from maintenance to innovation. (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011)

Cloud customers could be any organization, individual or government. But for this research the customer is:

- An IT department of a municipality or, - A shared service center or,

- A citizen of the concerning municipality or, - An employee of the concerning municipality.

Municipalities in the Netherlands could chose to manage their own IT environment or to make use of a shared service center or to outsource their IT to a third party.

A shared service center is a collaboration model in where business functions are concentrated into a new, (semi) autonomous, business unit that is designed to realize more efficiency, to add more value, to cut costs and to improve the service for the customers of the shared service center. Smaller municipalities often choose to join or start a shared service center. The economies of scale will decrease the costs and will increase the quality. (Quanjer, 2011)

Municipalities can choose to manage their own IT environment, especially larger municipalities manage the IT environment on their own. They can design, manage and structure this IT department according their own vision.

Competitors

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The KING also recognizes the need for collaboration between municipalities in the field of IT. With more collaboration municipalities could enhance the quality of their services towards their citizens and organizations and municipalities could adopt innovations easier and faster. (Quanjer, 2011) Political

The political influence in this research is an important factor. The decision made concerning the IT strategy are partly subjected to the political view of the European Union, the Dutch Government, the Provinces and the composition of the local board at municipalities. The decisions made by the mentioned parties will affect the IT strategy and environment at the municipalities. (Ruiter, Stam, Verbeek, & van der Vleuten, 2010)

Legal

Stakeholders in this context are hard to define since the legal aspects are in terms of laws and regulations. The Dutch government and the European Union are the architects of those laws and are stakeholders. These legal issues are also connected with the political stakeholders.

Environmental

Cloud computing is also a ‘green concept’ according to some papers. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010) (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011) (Wyld, 2009) Energy usage will decrease because of the more efficient use of server capacity . During a survey of KPMG (2010) 18 % of the respondents expect to come to a more green IT because of cloud computing. (Hermans & Chung, 2010)

Technological

Marston et al. (2011) identified several key players in the cloud computing industry. An distinction is made between established players, key technology providers, the innovators and the enablers. See table 2 for an overview.

Established players Key technology providers The innovators The enablers

IBM Apache Amazon RightScale

Google EMC SalesForce.com Vordel

Microsoft Cisco Enomaly Capgemini

AT&T Logica *

Table 2 (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011) * added by C.J. van Dijk

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2.1.3 Aspects of cloud computing

Cloud computing deals with functional-, costs- and technological aspects. The literature of these different aspects will be reviewed in the three coming paragraphs. This will give cloud computing a clear and holistic meaning.

A. Functional points of focus

Several aspects needs some extra focus when selecting, implementing and maintaining cloud computing. These points of focus will be reviewed in this paragraph.

Elasticity

One of the most important non-functional aspect of cloud computing is elasticity. Elasticity is a term what is often used to define cloud computing. The difference with grid computing is that clouds offer automatic resizing of virtualized hardware resources. And with grid, only the number of nodes could be scaled. (Vaquero, Rodero-Merino, Caceres, & Lindner, 2009)

A well-defined definition of Elasticity is “Users can rapidly provision computing resources, as needed, without human interaction. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically to quickly scale out or up” (Zissis & Lekkas, 2011)

Scalability

The European Union are describing scalability as an essential core feature of cloud systems. Within the scalability context, a distinction could be made between horizontal- and vertical scalability. Horizontal scalability refers to the amount of instances to satisfy e.g. changing amount of requests. And vertical scalability is the size of instances themselves and thus implicit to the amount of resources required to maintain the size. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

Availability

Zissis and Lekkas (2010) describes availability as: “Availability refers to the property of a system being accessible and usable upon demand by an authorized entity”. Constant availability of the cloud services is essential when using information systems that supports the primary processes. Availability refers to data, software and hardware that needs to be available upon request of the users. The services needs to be available even though there is a security breach or even when authorities misbehave.

Reliability

Reliability concerns issues as prevention and loss and is important for any organization but for public organizations is this even more important. This is explained by Rainer Zimmerman during a conference in where dependability is recognized as one of the major cloud challenges.

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Dependability

Dependability has direct connection with reliability and availability. Since users are very dependable on the cloud services, therefore the level of reliability and availability needs to be high. (Zimmerman, 2011)

A cloud needs to have enough slack resources to handle the peaks (when over capacity is demanded), otherwise a cloud could simply fail. Another risk is dependability of the vendor. When the vendor goes out of business, the safety, custody and availability of the data and services needs to be maintained. (Paquette, Jaeger, & Wilson, 2010)

B. Costs aspects

Cloud computing will cause economical changes for organizations. This paragraph will review the literature that’s applicable for this research and what concerns economical aspects of cloud computing.

Cost reduction.

The cost could be reduced by the factors mentioned below. Though, the overall economic reason to adopt cloud computing is cost reduction. In a survey of KPMG in 2010 75% of the respondents said that cost savings is an expected benefit with cloud computing. Among the respondents who are already using cloud computing, 54% do experience actual cost savings. (Hermans & Chung, 2010) Delivery model

The customer can choose for cloud computing instead of the traditional ‘on premise’ solutions. This will change the delivery model as depicted in figure 4. The customer still demands for IT services for user. However the delivery model changed in such a way that the services are available through the internet instead of the hard- and software on premise. Another important issue is the difference in transaction method, the traditional way of licenses and support costs versus the pay-as-you-go method. (Hermans & Chung, 2010)

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Return of Investment (ROI)

The ROI is a financial performance indicator that indicates if it is commercially viable to invest in a certain project. The ROI with cloud computing projects is hard to determine. Organizations have to trade off the benefits versus the costs. Is, because of the investment, the direct benefits (more turnover) and/or the indirect benefits (better workplace environment) worth than the costs of the investment? This question is hard to answer and all the pros and cons needs to be identified and outweighed. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

Misra and Mondal (2011) described an methodology to calculate the ROI for cloud computing. The standard ROI and the cloud ROI in this method are calculated with these formulas (Misra & Mondal, 2011): CAPEX to OPEX

Cloud computing will change the financial scope from CAPEX to OPEX. Capital investments (CAPEX) are needed when building a local infrastructure. Moving to the cloud means moving to remote resources and to the pay-per-use payment model. These costs are seen as operational costs since you only pay for what you need and are categorized as OPEX. Most companies are recognizing this shift as an cloud computing benefit. (Logica, 2010)

The switch, from capital to operational, could be depicted best by figure 5 concerning the correlation between storage requirements and capacity. The left graph shows the unused services and loss of opportunity with on-premise computing, the right graph shows the perfect fit between cloud storage capacity and storage requirements. With on-premise computing CAPEX are needed to meet the storage requirements while OPEX is applicable with cloud computing.

Figure 5 Cloud computing versus on-premise computing. (Hermans & Chung, 2010)

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because of the switch from CAPEX to OPEX. The percentage seems a bit low, but the difference between CAPEX and OPEX is a long term shift. The survey does not mention for what period the respondents are using cloud computing. Though, 54% of the respondents experienced costs savings. Pay-per-use.

One of the main benefits of cloud computing is the pay-per-use characteristic. The customer only pays for the resources the customer has used. This could be measured at different levels and at different types, for example the used storage capacity, or the used processor time or the number of times the service is used. The pay-per-use model is described in many articles as benefit. (Quanjer, 2011), (Subashini & Kavitha, 2011) (Svantesson & Clarke, 2010) (Cervone, 2010) etc.

Initial investment costs

Cloud computing enables SME to set up their infrastructure quicker than in the ‘on premise’ situation. This benefit is essential for SME that want to sell products quickly without dealing with setting up an ‘on premise’ infrastructure. Cloud computing vendors often offering services dedicated to certain specific user cases. This will decrease the potential configuration time and will increase the time to market. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010)

C. Technological aspects

The technological aspects of cloud computing will be mentioned briefly during this paragraph. Security

Security is the most essential aspect in the cloud computing industry, especially when working with high sensitive data. (Jeffery & Neidecker-Lutz, 2010) 14 key security elements needs to be taken in mind when using cloud computing. These 14 issues include for example data security, data access, authentication, back up, availability and identity management. (Subashini & Kavitha, 2011) Another article identified trust as foundation on which security needs to be built with third parties. (Zissis & Lekkas, 2011) And the main concern regarding the use of cloud computing are security issues. 76% of the respondents during a survey mentioned security issues as main concern. (Hermans & Chung, 2010)

Data protection is an enormous challenge, for either the Netherlands as the EU, since data may be hosted anywhere in the world. And therefore it is subjected to the specific legislative issues that may depend on the location where it is hosted. And different countries have different laws regarding data protection, this makes it especially a challenge for the EU. The answer is to harmonize the different data protection laws within the EU. (Zimmerman, 2011)

Virtualization

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2.2. Evolution of cloud computing.

The literature concerning the evolution of cloud computing will be given to create a clear and comprehensive view on cloud computing. The technology of cloud computing is built out of several previous techniques and should not be seen as technology apart. Cloud computing should be seen as emerging technology composed out of several previous technologies.

Some are claiming that cloud computing is a digital revolution, others are seeing cloud computing as part of the digital evolution. A good example for the proponents of the revolution is the paradigm shift with electricity. Like Thomas Edison mentioned in New Jersey, 1879; “We will make electric light so cheap, that only the rich will burn candles”. Michiel de van der Schueren presented a paradigm shift during a cloud congress in Utrecht on 14 April 2011: “Cloud computing will become so cheap, that only the rich will have a personal computer”.

Simon Wardley has explained this conception during a presentation in 2009. The theory is that most technologies start as innovation and will end as a commodity with an utility delivery model. This theory is founded by making use of the graph depicted in figure 6. (Wardley, 2009)

According to IBM (2009), the evolution of cloud computing could be divided into four stages. (IBM, 2009) The first stage was called grid computing; solving large problems with parallel computing. The second stage was utility computing in where computing resources were offered as metered services.

Thereafter, the third stage was the emergence of SaaS applications. SaaS could be described as network-based subscriptions to applications. Saas had to deal with four stages during her evolution, see figure 8. (Guptill & McNee, 2008)

Saas became a commodity for organizations and individuals, see figure 8 at the next page and notice the similarity with figure 6.

The next innovation after SaaS, Cloud Computing, was that everything (IT related) could become a ‘… as a Service’. As mentioned in the previous chapter, infrastructure (IaaS) and Platforms (PaaS) are nowadays also offered as a service. These two techniques started as innovation (low certainty and novel ubiquity) but slowly grow into commodity (high certainty and common ubiquity).

Cloud computing is evolved into a new technology and the reason of the emergence could be contributed to several reasons. The main reason is that organizations see more opportunities to cut

Figure 6 From innovation to Commodity (Wardley, 2009)

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waste and increase their profit by using more levels than Saas, namely IaaS and PaaS. The redundant (expensive) server capacity of organizations is abandoned and organizations only pay for what they use. Organizations prefer to have OPEX without large investments above CAPEX with fixed costs. Another advantage is the increasing ‘speed to market’ and the ease of deploying solutions in the cloud. Another additional benefit is that cloud computing is a ‘green’ concept compared to many servers with redundant capacity. (Wyld, 2009)

During this research cloud computing will be conceived as part of the IT evolution. Cloud computing is not a freestanding technology but composed out of several other technologies.

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2.3. Governmental clouds

This paragraph is structured as follow: firs the current state of cloud computing at the Dutch government followed by the current state in the European Union. Thereafter the governmental clouds in other countries and/or states will be described. The paragraph will be concluded with the relation between governmental clouds and municipalities.

Dutch governmental cloud

At the end of April 2011 the Dutch government decided to start using cloud computing. Cloud computing will be used for the Dutch government in the beginning as a closed cloud and only for some services as kind of an experiment. The aim is to reach higher quality with lower costs with taken the security and dependability risks into account. Although the government is a different kind of an organization compared to commercial organizations, cloud computing advantages could be applicable for Dutch government as well. (Donner, Kamerbrief over cloud computing, 2011)

The responses out of the market vary between positive and negative concerning the decision to start using cloud computing for the Dutch government. All the parties recognize the need for more flexibility and scalability without the load of setting up IT projects. Though, the security of the data needs be guaranteed by using contracts to meet all the required conditions. (Ambtenaar2.0, 2011) (Inoverheid.nl, 2011) (Profnews, 2011) (Works, 2011) (Computable, 2011). The Dutch government decided that the suppliers of cloud services (Amazon, Salesforce and Google) are still too immature to host services for the Dutch Government. Donner will manage and maintain the cloud by an department of the Dutch government. (Donner, Kamerbrief over cloud computing, 2011)

The expectation is that cloud computing could achieve lower costs and will stimulate the innovation. To use cloud computing as effective as possible; in 2012 the program: ‘productivity and cloud computing’ will start. This program has to identify and which requirements are necessary. Those requirements will be related to security, privacy, legal aspects and data security. Besides that, the Dutch government wants to take the ‘open standards’ into account to enable interoperability and transparency. (RIVD, 2011)

At the beginning is the Dutch govcloud only meant for: - Data storage and server/infrastructure capacity.

- E-mail, work environment, cooperation and connection to the information management. Further is the government willing to implement an ‘cloud first’ strategy. The Dutch government wants to implement new services and products that are already used by the Dutch population. The Dutch government have to study the financial consequences and they have to check whether it is legally and technical possible to offer a service legal. The Dutch government will stimulate this by means of ‘open data’, competitions and social media. (Donner, Kamerbrief over cloud computing, 2011)

European governmental cloud

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A short summary of this paper will give a good overview of the current state of cloud computing in Europe.

The cloud is not a new technology but future IT system that’s already proven by commercial organizations. Important characteristics of cloud computing are scalability, several levels of infrastructure, shift from CAPEX to OPEX and there is already capacity to exploit it.

The cloud is able to offer several advantages but there are still challenges of a governmental cloud, those are identified as:

- Privacy & Security

- Federation & Interoperability - Legislation, Government & Policies - Economic concerns

The paper summarized ‘Europe and Clouds’ in two sentences: “Europe’s main opportunities to participate in the “cloud movement” consists in particular in aspects related to extending and completing the capabilities of current cloud systems, whereby the long-term goal consists in realizing meta-scalable cloud systems and services. The complexity to realize the opportunities directly depends directly on the complexity to perform the underlying research work and of the current development status.

Other governmental clouds

Some countries already implemented a cloud first strategy for their IT strategy. A cloud first strategy means that new or current IT systems will be migrated or implemented in the cloud and not on the traditional way (own servers) anymore.

Right now, some countries like Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA already implemented the cloud first strategy for their IT policy. Some cities in the USA outsourced some of their activities to the cloud. Washington D.C. for example outsourced their e-mail services to the cloud of Google. With as result a 48% savings on average per user. In hard figures; $50,- instead of $96,- per user per year. Besides the costs aspects; Japan, Denmark and the USA are using cloud computing to increase the quality and to be more ‘green’. (Ruiter, Stam, Verbeek, & van der Vleuten, 2010)

The above mentioned countries have analysed the risks and made the decision to use the cloud in their IT strategy. Google uses a Govcloud platform to secure the data of the Los Angeles police department. This cloud is maintained within the continental United States. Employees of Google with access to this cloud had a rigorous background check.

Cloud provider Salesforce.com has “over the top security with five levels of biometric hand geometry scanners and even ‘man trap’ cages designed to spring on those without proper clearance”. According to Gardiner in (Wyld, 2009).

Relation with Dutch municipalities

Since the governmental cloud is already in use by some countries, it is somehow a prove that it is secure. And cases have shown that a governmental cloud is cheaper.

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such as the risk of unauthorized access, infrastructure failure or unavailability. Intangible risks are those such as confidence in technologies capabilities and public access. (Paquette, Jaeger, & Wilson, 2010)

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2.4. E-government.

This chapter explains first what e-government entails and why e-government is an important aspect for municipalities. Thereafter, the current state of the Netherlands concerning e-government will be elaborated. A summary of IT strategy will be given at the end of this paragraph.

2.4.1 What is e-government?

E-government is a broad concept. Several authors give several different definitions of e-government. Some describe e-government as the use of internet for delivering government information and services to citizens. Others describe it as a tool to achieve better government. However, nowadays e-government is considered as a tool for bringing e-governments closer to citizens. (Pina, Torres, & Royo, 2010) Or as Gartner defined e-government as: “E-government is the continuous optimization of service delivery, constituency participation and governance by transforming internal and external relationships through technology, the Internet and new media.” (Fang, 2002) For this paper, e-government is considered as a tool coherent with the mentioned aspects by Fang (2002).

Since governments became aware of the added value of E-government, the development became visible in different areas. There are 4 kind of different areas, government-to-customer (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government (G2G) and government-to-employee (G2E). (Siau & Long, 2009)

Nowadays citizens (G2C) and employees (G2E) can’t image their municipality without e-government services. Many municipalities offer products via their website. Citizens can request for passports, driving licenses and parking licenses. This service is a win-win situation for both; for the citizen is the number of actual visits to the service

desk is reduced and the municipality has as advantage that the citizen takes over a part of the order entry. The government established a better, closer, relationship with their citizens because of e-government. E-government seems to be more responsive to the needs of citizens, more democratic and more efficient. (Bekkers & Homburg, 2007)

Advantages for businesses (G2B) are significant as well. Many governmental procedures are digitalized and businesses can remotely take care of the all kind of requests, procedures and information gathering.

Costs of e-government became a substantial part of the ICT budgets. Nowadays, some governments are facing high IT costs through their expensive and extended e-government policy. Server utilization is low although the investment in servers is high and maintenance costs are significant.

Some barriers to e-government are categorized as technical, political, organizational, legal and/or financial. The most commonly problems were lack of technology or lack of financial resources. The lack of technology is mostly determined by the lack of skilled web staff. It’s hard to find professionals in the IT sector because of the competing private sector. (Coursey & Norris, 2008)

A paper of I-Ways (2006) described the seven top barriers of e-government: - Leadership failures

- Financial inhibitors - Digital divides - Poor coordination

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- Workplace and organizational flexibility - Lack of trust

- Poor technical design

I-Ways described e-government barrier as: “Characteristics – either real or perceived – of legal, social, technological or institutional context which work against developing e-Government at the EU level, either: because they impede demand, by acting as a disincentive or barrier for users to engage with e-Government services; or because they impede supply, by acting as a disincentive or barrier for public sector organizations to provide e-Government services. These barriers could be applicable for cloud computing as well.” (I-Ways, 2006) These E-government barriers could be applicable for cloud computing as well.

E-government is dealing with several different forms of business models according to Janssen et al (2008). The different business models have to be reviewed since the expectation is that cloud computing will affect the business models of e-government.

The authors reviewed 59 business models and found 8 categories. Those 8 kind of categories are described and for each are the characteristics and typical functions given. The different business models are: content provider, direct-to-customer, value-net-integrators, full-service provider, infrastructure service provider, market, collaboration and virtual communities. (Janssen & Kuk, 2008) Concluding; e-government is a tool bringing the government closer to the citizen. This could be divided in 4 different areas and e-government faces 7 barriers. E-government is indispensable nowadays but causes organizational and financial challenges.

2.4.2. Current and future state of e-government.

Is the current state of e-government far enough to adopt new technologies, like cloud computing. Or is e-government still too in mature for the next phase? This paragraph will emphasize on techniques how to measure the level of maturity and on the current state of e-government in the Netherlands. E-government processes could be divided into

different stages in terms of technological- and service level. Four different stages of e-government are mentioned in figure 10 below. (Löfstedt, 2007) This stage model could be used to classify current processes at municipalities. The Siau and Long paper elaborated the impact of two factors, ICT and HR, on the development of e-government. The results of the paper showed that both factors have significant influence on the development of e-government. Organizations have to be aware of the impact of ICT and HR on the development of e-government.

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The paper of Singh, Das and Joseph (2007) elaborated the factors on country level which are influencing the e-government maturity. They have compared several researches and found that the Gross Domestic Product Per Capita is influencing the Human Capital index, the ICT infrastructure and the Governance index. And those three are influencing the E-government maturity. The results show that countries with a low Gross Domestic Product per Capita are able to improve their e-government maturity. (Singh, Das, & Joseph, 2007)

Another paper, of Chalhoub (2010), showed that the Netherlands have an 11th place concerning the overall e-government maturity level. A study among 23 countries about e-government maturity was done by Accenture. The maturity level was measured by two factors. Firs the number of available services online and their completeness. Secondly, by the CRM representing the sophistication and value of the service that the citizen gets online. The Netherlands could be categorized as visionary challengers of the three innovative leaders. (Chalhoub, 2010)

The CBS studied in 2006 the e-government level of the Netherlands, compared to the EU, and the municipalities within the Netherlands. The development of E-government of the Netherlands is above average in the EU. However the Netherlands score insufficient in the end phase of the online service supply, this could be improved by the Dutch government. The CBS noted that municipalities achieve on average insufficient rates and that larger municipalities (>100.000 citizens) adopt e-government services much faster. Another interesting finding is that the gross spending of the municipality per citizen is not affecting the level of e-government. So ‘richer’ municipalities are not automatically faster with e-government than the ‘poorer’ governments. (van Kooten & Weller, 2006) Fang (2002) describes that e-government is changing the way people and businesses interact with government. Since 2002 the business and people have changed into a more online and service oriented life. Customers, people, require to have online interaction with the business and demand 24/7 availability of services. (Batley & Larbi, 2004)

E-government was the answer on the request for more online interaction with the customer. Cloud computing is the answer on the following demands. Customers wants to have more information at more devices by using always available services.

This shift will affect the design of the organization. The organization of a municipality could be characterized by the high degree of formalization and the low degree of in- and exclusion. (Bekkers, 2003) The emerging concept of virtual organizations will influence the organization design of municipalities as well. The expectation is that, since virtual computing is seen as part of the cloud computing, the adoption of cloud computing will make organizations more virtual. Organizations have to deal with that by changing their processes and procedures.

This literature review shows is that level or maturity of e-government could be measured by using several different methods. By technological vs. service level or by ICT and HR or at country level by the gross domestic product or by the number of available services and completeness.

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2.4.3 IT strategy

The strategy of the public organization is affecting the IT strategy of the organization. The IT strategy will affect the design and structure of the E-government.

This paragraph will review the literature regarding IT strategy in common and IT strategy at public organizations and in particular the IT strategy at public organizations.

Strategy is described in many different ways by many different authors. Chen et al. (2010) identified that Andrews (1980), Mintzberg (1987), Porter (1996) and Whittington (1993) have answerd the question ‘what is strategy?’ in different ways. There is not one standard definition of strategy. Besides the definition of strategy, several different strategy models could be use to get a perspective on strategy, like the five-forces model and the value chain model of Porter (1980, 1985), the resource based view of Barney (1991) and a strategy model of Hambrick and Fredrickson (2001). Despite the many definitions and models to provide perspective, there is not yet consensus about what exactly strategy is. Though, Chen et al. (2010) found a definition of strategy of Mintzberg (1987) that is best applicable: “Strategy is an organizational perspective on setting and meeting organizational goals.” (Chen, Mocker, Preston, & Teubner, 2010)

The strategy at public organizations is different then strategy at commercial organizations. (Nutt & Backoff, 1995) mentioned that true strategic behavior is rare in the public sector because of the combination of complex policy, programmatic challenges, highly politicized insitituional environments and rule-bound administrative systems.

The strategies of the public sector are dynamic and are changing over time. The emerge of e-government has resulted in to a shift in terms of strategy. A study to the Danish public sector shows that there is a shift in the public sector from flexibility, innovation, autonomy and vision to centralization, standardization and more control. (Jæger & Löfgren, 2010) These results correspond with the paper of Nutt & Backoff (1995).

So, the strategy of public organizations is different compared to commercial organization and the strategy changes because of e-government.

IT strategy is part of the overall strategy of the organization and deals with the information technology perspective and goals. The IT strategy have to correspond with the organization strategy. See figure of Versteeg & Bouwman; the formulation of the IT strategy will be the input for the business architecture and subsequent architectures like organization, processes and ICT. (Versteeg & Bouwman, 2006)

The Dutch government decided to adopt a closed govcloud to their IT strategy, as mentioned in paragraph 2.3. The IT strategy of the Dutch government is led by CIO Maarten Hillenaar who under direct supervision of the minister of Home Affairs. 60% of the economic growth in 1985-2005 was

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connected with ICT and it is still going on. The Dutch government has as three main goals the coming five years; to achieve more interference with their citizens, to have more control on large IT projects and to start with a govcloud. (Rijksoverheid, 2011)

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3. Methodology

3.1 Introduction

The methodology used during this research will be explained in this chapter. Among others, the research question, objectives and research approach will be elaborated. The chapter will start with the delineation of the field of interest and will be concluded with the limitations of the research.

3.2 Field of interest

The first delineation of the research was to determine the field of interest. The research originated out of the thoughts that the opportunities of cloud computing were studied at national and European level but not yet at the level of municipalities, while municipalities are appropriate for standardized services since their processes are, in principle, similar. The use of cloud computing by governments is often defined as a governmental cloud, or in short govcloud. The use of a govcloud will probably impact the current architecture of the e-government and the processes.

The fields of interest concerned the topics discussed above. See figure 11 for a graphical depiction of the research area.

Figure 11 Research area

3.3 Research question

The research question is formulated after the delineation of the research area. The research question is formulated as:

In what way can cloud computing contribute to the IT strategy of municipalities?

This formulation of the research question is chosen because ‘in what way’ could be conceived as future ideas and/or as current used services that could be improved. The use of the verb ‘contribute’ is chosen since contribute is about providing something (assistance, knowledge, money or time) to a certain purpose. The use of contribute gives a broader perspective to this research compared to focusing only on financial-, time- or knowledge related advantages.

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different aspects of the research questions gives reason to use sub questions to clearly answer the main question. That’s why this study is making use of several sub questions. These sub questions and main research question will be answered in chapter 6, the conclusion.

Sub question:

- What is cloud computing?

- What is the IT strategy of municipalities?

- How is the current degree of knowledge, of IT responsible employees, regarding cloud computing at municipalities?

- What is/could be the role of cloud computing at municipalities and which factors are influencing cloud computing?

The main research question and the sub questions were leading during the formulation of the interview questions and during the determination of the appropriate literature.

3.4 Objectives

After the composition of the research area and the research question, several objectives needed to be set. The use of objectives makes it possible to achieve certain goals and to determine the rate of completeness.

The research objectives are split into four parts. The objectives of this research are as follows:

a. To study and analyse secondary literature to provide an understanding in cloud computing, e-government, governmental clouds and the evolution of cloud computing.

b. To understand the IT strategy of municipalities by means of interviews and case studies. c. To come to a clear overview of the barriers and opportunities of cloud computing at

municipalities.

d. To answer the research- and sub questions properly.

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3.5 Research approach

The actual research approach will be described in this paragraph after defining the research area, the main- and sub questions, the objectives and the expected outcomes. As mentioned before, the literature review in combination with the findings of the interviews is the foundation for the discussion and conclusion. See figure 12 for a graphical depiction of the research approach.

The interview approach and the approach of the literature review will be explained in respectively paragraph 3.5.1. and 3.5.2..

Figure 12 Research approach

3.5.1 Literature review

The approach towards the literature review is depicted in the model of figure 12. This model will be explained in this paragraph.

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3.5.2 Interviews

After the completion of the literature review, the data collection needs to get started by means of interviews. The interviews were held with experts (public sector, cloud computing, security, etc.) and with IT employees at municipalities. The objective of the interviews is to give a practical and empirical insight into cloud computing at municipalities and the influencing aspects. The data collected during the interviews and the corresponding analysis will be the input for answering the main- and sub question(s) of this research.

The interviewees of the municipalities are listed in table 3a, the experts in table 3b.

Municipalities: Date: Duration (min):

1 Marcel Ningen Leek 14-03-2011 101

2 Raymond Hinderks Hoogezand - Sappemeer 15-03-2011 119

3 Hans Ottens Haren 15-03-2011 43

4 Siete Rutgers Winsum 11-04-2011 69

5 Marcel Daalman & Jos Moes Groningen SOZAWE 19-04-2011 33

6 Karina Uil GemCC 27-04-2011 40

7 Jan Lukens Stadskanaal 28-04-2011 65

8 Cor Top Groningen Centraal 03-05-2011 110

Table 3a Interviews with municipalities.

THE FUTURE OF CLOUD COMPUTING AT DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES AN EXPLORATORY STUDY TO THE OPPORTUNITIES OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES IN THE PROVINCE GRONINGEN.