Evaluating efficiency of cloud service providers in era of digital technologies

Majid Azadi, Mehdi Toloo, Fahimeh Ramezani, Reza Farzipoor Saen*, Farookh Khadeer Hussain, Hajar Farnoudkia

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The rapid growth of advanced technologies such as cloud computing in the Industry 4.0 era has provided numerous advantages. Cloud computing is one of the most significant technologies of Industry 4.0 for sustainable development. Numerous providers have developed various new services, which have become a crucial ingredient of information systems in many organizations. One of the challenges for cloud computing customers is evaluating potential providers. To date, considerable research has been undertaken to solve the problem of evaluating the efficiency of cloud service providers (CSPs). However, no study addresses the efficiency of providers in the context of an entire supply chain, where multiple services interact to achieve a business objective or goal. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a powerful method for efficiency measurement problems. However, the current models ignore undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data which can lead to inaccurate results. As such, the primary objective of this paper is to design a decision support system that accurately evaluates the efficiency of multiple CSPs in a supply chain. The current study incorporates undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data in a network DEA model for the efficiency measurement of service providers. The results from a case study illustrate the applicability of our new system. The results also show how taking undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data into account changes the efficiency of service providers. The system is also able to provide the optimal composition of CSPs to suit a customer’s priorities and requirements.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages26
JournalAnnals of Operations Research
Early online date9 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 9 Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright © Springer Nature B.V. 2023. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05257-x

Keywords

  • Cloud service providers
  • Efficiency evaluation
  • Industry 4.0
  • Two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA)

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