show that Protection, Scalability and Service Charge are among the top three criteria the company would consider when choosing the right cloud service type. Business migration and technical migration ranked the lowest among all the criteria (see Table 2).
Table 1.Level 1 comparison results.
Since security is the company’s top concern when migrating to the cloud, it is no surprise that protection is the most important criterion to consider. After migrating to the cloud, the company needs to work closely with the cloud service provider to provide the satisfactory level of data protection, communication protection and operation protection.
Scalability is one of the major reasons the company will want to migrate to the cloud. The capability to meet the company’s growth is essential. The company projected a year over year growth of 20% in the coming years. The cloud service choice needs to be able to handle this growth without significant successive migration efforts or additional charges.
Service Charge as a repeated cost is important to the financial health of a company. Whether this charge will increase significantly over time with the growth of the company needs to be carefully considered and counted into the total cost of production. Migrating to cloud computing is expected to be a cost-effective way of doing business. A good calculation and estimate of cloud service charges will help improve the profit margin of the company.
Table 2.Level 2 comparison results.
The company has an experienced IT department. BMF’s IT manager has previous experience in cloud migration; this helps to make the migration process easier for both business and technical areas. Also, the IT staff’s knowledge in cloud server management adds confidence to the top management of this company over the technical aspect of this migration.
The Level 3 comparison results show that IaaS, with a score of 0.35, is the first choice for the cloud service that will suit the company’s needs. SaaS, with a score of 0.34, is a close second choice (see Table 3). The difference between IaaS and SaaS is very small. Two out of seven experts scored IaaS as the first choice, while three out of seven experts scored SaaS as the first choice. IaaS get the highest average score partially due to one of the experts giving IaaS a very high score of 0.5. It could be viewed as an outlier in this set of data; this makes the final decision in IaaS less convincing. By simply looking at the scores, it seems that both IaaS and SaaS could be the final decision from this model.
Table 3.Level 3 comparison results.
Based on our research and literature review, we are confident of the HDM model we set up for this problem. We believe that our HDM model covers all the criteria that need to be considered when making this decision. After evaluating the comments from the class presentation and discussion within our group, we found out that our evaluation method in this round of analysis was flawed. It had been an inaccurate assumption to include all the seven experts’ pairwise comparison inputs in each of the three levels of comparison.
The company executives in the expert panel are not technical experts. They have very limited knowledge on how cloud computation and cloud migration works. Their pairwise comparisons in Level 3 on each alternative were not reliable, though their inputs in Level 1 and Level 2 comparisons were useful since they are most familiar with the company’s current condition and future needs. In contrast, the two external experts’ inputs in Level 3 comparisons were valuable because they are familiar with the technical issues and barriers a company could face during migration. However, since they are not familiar with the company’s internal operation, their inputs on Level 1 and Level 2 comparisons were mostly based on their general knowledge of companies of similar scale, and were therefore less reliable.
To resolve this issue in the first round of analysis, we conducted a second round of analysis on the HDM model.
6.2.Second round of analysis
To test the HDM model and fix our problem in the expert panel use, we conducted a second round of analysis. During the second round, we divided the seven experts into two panels. Expert Panel 1 consisted of the five team members acting as the executive team, who would make pairwise comparisons in Level 1 and Level 2 of this model, while Expert Panel 2 consisted of the two external cloud migration consultants, who would make pairwise comparisons in Level 3 only.
Table 4.Level 1 comparison results.
The results of the Level 1 comparison show that Security is still the company’s top concern in migration to the cloud, with Management being of the least concern. These results correspond to those from the first round analysis. Thus, Security is indeed critical to BMF, as it is an online retail company. Security should be given the highest level of consideration when making the decision on cloud migration (see Table 4).
The Level 2 comparison results show that Scalability, Protection and Service Charge are still ranked as the top three decision criteria for this migration. These results are also consistent with those from the first round of analysis, with minor differences in weights only. Technical Migration and Business Migration are still ranked the lowest among all the criteria (see Table 5).
We could interpret the similarities in the Level 1 and Level 2 comparison results in the two rounds of analysis as that of the internal and external experts having a similar understanding of the objectives and criteria associated with cloud migration. BMF, as an online retail company, has similar concerns and issues as with any other companies from the same line of business.
Table 5.Level 2 comparison results.
Level 3 comparison results show that IaaS, with a score of 0.38, is the first choice for the cloud service that will suit the company. SaaS, with a score of 0.32, is the second choice. The differences between IaaS and SaaS are significant. IaaS is the clear winner in this round of analysis (see Table 6).
Results from both the experts are very similar to each other, where there was minimal disagreement. This makes the results of the second round analysis more convincing than those in the first round. IaaS is the definite choice of the cloud service that this company should take.
The similarities between the results from both rounds of analysis prove that our HDM model is well set up and stable. The use of expert panels in the second round of analysis is more appropriate.
Table 6.Level 3 comparison results.
7.Further Analysis of the Results
7.1.First round of analysis
7.1.1.The
