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In recent years, a large number of organizations have found that cloud computing has many advantages leading to a surge in its adoption.

Cloud computing involves the usage of large servers for the access of data, its storage and manipulation as well as provisioning of other services.

When infrastructure, applications, data and storage are hosted by cloud providers, there are huge security risks associated with each type of service offered.

There are a number of considerations, apart from cost which must be evaluated before choosing any particular provider. Sometimes, the physical location of the servers may also be a factor to consider, if sensitive duty is involved.

This paper aims to examine the types of cloud computing, models, characteristics, descriptions, applications, considerations for use and benefits of the following technologies to library users. Cloud computing has taken libraries in Kenya by storm. Because of this, many libraries do not know what to do. They are at cross-roads. They lack policies to govern them. However, the recent realization by information professionals that cloud computing has a critical role to play in the provision of information services has created a desire to effectively harness and manage them for scholarly communication.

The research reviewed previous studies on the topic by examining both electronic and print information resources available in the libraries and internet.

The findings revealed that libraries in Kenya are yet to fully embrace cloud computing in their operations. There are mixed feelings by librarians on the degree at which they should integrate these technologies in their service provisions. However, there is a positive progress toward this noble venture.

Kenya as a developing nation has limited local content on the subject. The study established that some of the available literature is restricted by intellectual property rights. This forced the researcher to rely heavily on foreign literature for the study.

Appreciation of emerging cloud computing technologies by libraries is inevitable for the sustainability and management of modern libraries. Cloud computing makes libraries more competitive by adequately meeting user’s technological needs. This study will also act as a benchmark for the Government of Kenya to improve the current information communication technology (ICT) national policy.

Apart from revolutionalizing library operations and delivery of services, cloud computing will tremendously revolutionize the social-cultural and communication landscape of the society.

The paper provides vital information and insights into how libraries are embracing cloud computing in the provision and dissemination of varied information services to library users.

Although cloud computing is widely recognized as a technology game changer because it offers anytime, anywhere services, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped. This article seeks to define that potential for generating new business models and disrupting industries.

The authors show how cloud technology has the power to fundamentally shift competitive landscapes by providing a new platform for creating and delivering business value.

IBM research suggests that organizations are just beginning to understand the power of cloud services to help drive business innovation.

To track how organizations use cloud tech today and how they plan to employ its power in the future, IBM surveyed 572 business and technology executives across.

The survey found that companies worldwide are beginning to recognize cloud's capabilities to generate new business models and promote sustainable competitive advantage.

By assisting in developing new operating capabilities, cloud technology can help a company change its role within its industry or enter a different industry.

This study aims to identify the level of security from existing work, analyze categories of security as a service (SECaaS) and classify them into a meaningful set of groups. Further, the report will advise commercial applications and advice of SECaaS as an extended context to help firms make decisions.

This paper compares the SECaaS categories in Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) with the security clauses in ISO/IEC 27002:2013 to give a comprehensive analysis of those SECaaS categories. Reviewed from a number of related literature, this paper analyzes and categorizes SECaaS into three major groups including protective, detective and reactive based on security control perspectives. This study has discussed the three groups and their interplay to identify the key characteristics and problems that they aim to address.

This paper also adds new evidence to support a better understanding of the current and future challenges and directions for SECaaS. Also, the study reveals both the positive and negative aspects of SECaaS along with business cases. It advises on various sizes and domains of organizations to consider SECaaS as one of their potential security approaches.

SECaaS has been demonstrated to be one of the increasingly popular ways to address security problems in Cloud computing. As a new concept, SECaaS could be treated as integrated security means and delivered as a service module in the Cloud. However, it is still in infancy and not very widely investigated. Recent studies suggest that SECaaS is an efficient solution for Cloud and real industries. However, shortcomings of SECaaS have not been well-studied and documented. Moreover, reviewing the existing research, researchers did not classify the SECaaS-related categories.

The significance of cloud services in information technology (IT) is increasing as a means of achieving enhanced productivity, efficiency and cost reduction. Through cloud-based service, the reliability and scalability of an organization’s systems can be enhanced since organizations such as local governments are able to concentrate on their main business strategies. This research seeks to identify critical factors that may have an impact on the acceptance of cloud-based services, where the organizational context is based on local governments in Australia.

To formulate a more comprehensive IT innovation adoption model for cloud technology, factors from the technology-organizational-environment framework, desires framework and diffusion of innovation model were integrated. Data was obtained from 480 IT staff working in 47 local government organizations.

The research results show that the factors which had a statistically significant and positive impact on the adoption of cloud-based services in local governments were compatibility, complexity, cost, security concerns, expected benefits and organization size. It is likely that the outcomes from this research will provide insights to any organization seeking to make investment decisions on the adoption of cloud-based services.

Limitations include generalizability of the findings since the data is restricted to local government areas in Queensland, Australia. Further, the sample mostly included individuals with managerial positions and may not completely capture the cloud adoption factors relevant for front line IT employees. Another limitation is the possible omission of factors that may be relevant but not considered due to the selected theories. Lastly, this research did not differentiate between different types of cloud adoption such as private, public, community and hybrid models that are possible in this context.

The paper provides a combination framework of cloud-based service adoption based on a literature review on cloud adoption from an IS perspective. It adapts integrated model to establish a more comprehensive innovation adoption framework for cloud technology.

Service composition phenomenon based on non-scenario aspects are become the latest issues in enterprise software applications of the multi-cloud environment due to the phenomenal increase in a number of Web services. The traditional service composition patterns are hard to support the dynamic, flexible and autonomous service composition in the inter-cloud platform. To address this problem, this paper aims to describe a dynamic service composition framework (SCF) that is enriched with various structural and functional aspects of composition patterns in a cloud computing environment. The proposed methodology helps to integrate various heterogeneous cloud services dynamically to acquire an optimal and novel enterprise solution for delivering the service to the end-users automatically.

SCF and different composition patterns have been used to compose the services present in the inter-cloud architecture of the multi-agent-based system. Further, the proposed dynamic service composition algorithm is illustrated using a hybrid approach, where service are chosen according to various needs of quality of service parameters. Besides, a priority-based service scheduling algorithm is proposed that facilitates the automation of delivering cloud service optimally.

The proposed framework is capable of composing the heterogeneous service and facilitate the structural and functional aspects of service composition process in enterprise cloud-based applications in terms of flexibility, scalability, integrity and dynamicity of the cloud bus. The advantage of the proposed algorithm is that it helps to minimize the execution cost, processing time and get better success rate in delivering the service as per customer’s need.

The novelty of the proposed architecture coordinates cloud participants, automate service discovery pattern, reconfigure scheduled services and focus on aggregating a composite services in inter-cloud environments. Besides, the proposed framework supported several non-functional characteristics such as robustness, flexibility, dynamicity, scalability and reliability of the system.

Despite the ongoing calls for the incorporation of the cloud utility model, the effect of the cloud on elements of supply chain performance is still an evolving area of research. The purpose of this paper is to develop the architecture of a cloud-based supply chain management (C-SCM) ecosystem and explore how it enhances supply chain responsiveness (SCR).

First, the authors discuss the potential benefits that cloud computing can yield, compared to existing mature SCM information systems and solutions through a comprehensive literature review. The authors conceptualise SCR in terms of the level of visibility in the supply chain, supply chain flexibility and rapid detection and reaction to changes, and then the authors build the detailed architecture of a C-SCM system. The proposed ecosystem introduces a view of SCM and the associated practices when transferred to cloud environments. The potential to enhance SCR through the cloud is explored with scenarios on a case of supply chain operations in fashion retail industry.

The findings show that the proposed system can enhance all three dimensions of SCR. Implications for supply chain practice and how companies can migrate to a cloud supply chain are drawn.

Given that the development, creation and delivery of goods and services are increasingly becoming a joint effort of several parties in a supply chain, the authors contribute to the existing literature by introducing a comprehensive C-SCM system and show how companies can enhance their SCR.

Cloud computing is qualified to present proper limitless storage and computation resources to users as services throughout the internet. Software as a service (SaaS) layer is the key paradigm perspective in the software layer of the cloud computing. SaaS is connected by business applications to access consumers on existing public, private and hybrid cloud models. This purpose of this paper is to present a discussion and analysis on the SaaS layer based on business applications in the cloud environment in form of a classical taxonomy to recognize the existing techniques, challenges and efforts.

Existing techniques, challenges and efforts are classified into four categories: platform-dependent, application-dependent, data-dependent and security-dependent mechanisms. The SaaS layer mechanisms are compared with each other according to the important factors such as the structural properties, quality of service metrics, applied algorithms and measurement tools.

The benefits and weaknesses of each research study are analyzed. In the comparison results, the authors observed that the application-based method, the non-heuristic algorithms, the business process method have the highest percentage of the usage in this literature.

The SaaS layer mechanisms based on business applications have some main features such as high accessibility, compatibility, reusability and collaboration to provide activated application and operation services for user with help of Web browsers. A comprehensive analysis was presented as originality on the SaaS layer mechanisms based on business applications for high level of the cloud environment that 46 peer-reviewed studies were considered.

Today, the high cost of e-learning systems’ implementation and the difficulty of managing the infrastructures motivate educational institutions toward application of cloud-based e-learning systems. This new system should be aligned with the academics’ aims and pedagogical principles to be beneficial for learners and instructors. Therefore, the vendor selection of learning systems is one of the most important processes to migrate toward cloud-based e-learning. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new framework to facilitate the vendor selection of cloud-based e-learning systems in the cloud market.

To identify the initial criteria as to the vendor selection of cloud-based e-learning services, a literature review is done. To enrich the initial criteria, a focus group of experts is investigated, and the framework developed; then, a survey analysis is conducted to validate the proposed framework. The extracted criteria and sub-criteria are weighted and prioritized using best-worst method (BWM).

The results indicate that the main dimensions of vendor selection framework as regards cloud-based e-learning systems are managerial, technological and pedagogical factors. The rank orders and weights of the mentioned aspects and their sub-criteria are calculated using the BWM.

The proposed framework helps managers to get a big picture of requirements as to cloud-based e-learning and more effectively to select appropriate vendors in this initiative. In the vendor selection process, managers must pay attention to technological issues as well as managerial and pedagogical considerations.

Cloud-based e-learning systems are getting increasingly essential to offer training courses more efficiently in educational institutions. Although the intersection between cloud computing and e-learning has increasingly grown in both practical and academic contexts, there are little studies on how educational institutions and organizations could be able to select appropriate cloud-based e-learning systems. This paper explores the ignored but critically important subject of cloud-based e-learning. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a novel and integrated framework containing the important aspects of vendor selection in cloud-based e-learning services. The proposed framework comprises managerial, technological and pedagogical aspects simultaneously as well as sub-criteria denoting each aspect.