Abstract

AbstractA cloud federation (CF) is an alliance of cloud service providers (CSPs) working together to overcome scalability and portability barriers. However, there are some business challenges (e.g., lack of trust, lack of schemes for revenue sharing, and lack of schemes for resource sharing) and technological challenges (e.g., missing schemes for resource provisioning, lack of coordinated resource management, and little load balancing), causing instability in CFs. As CF alliances pursue strategic goals, they require intensive knowledge sharing. In fact, practitioners have confirmed a positive impact of knowledge management on stability and success of strategic alliances (SA). According to the literature, SAs may also face learning issues such as non–controlled information revelation or unbalanced dissemination of core competencies. These findings pose challenges about the nature of the knowledge and how to share it within a CF. Nonetheless, there is only scarce literature on KM in CF. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to propose a KM framework for CFs with the aim of strengthening stability and potential CF commercialization.

Highlights

  • In cloud federations (CFs), various cloud service providers (CSPs) are collaborating, when it comes to delivering services

  • The results showed that a lack of trust is one of the main reasons why CFs are not commercialized, whereas the motivation could be explained with the resource dependent theory and the resource-based view

  • These findings drive the focus on the relation between knowledge sharing among CSPs and the identification of the common strategic objectives, which are considered the first requirement for constructing our knowledge management (KM) framework, aiming at raising the stability of CFs

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Summary

Introduction

In cloud federations (CFs), various cloud service providers (CSPs) are collaborating, when it comes to delivering services. From the research on this relation, evidence was gained of a strong relation between KM and stability of a SA [6–8] Based on this newly discovered information, a search was started for a model that explains the relation between KM and SA stability with trust as the main enabler of knowledge sharing. The results showed that a lack of trust is one of the main reasons why CFs are not commercialized, whereas the motivation could be explained with the resource dependent theory and the resource-based view. The contribution of this paper is a proposal for a KM Framework for CFs, in order to strengthen stability of the underlying SA by improving trust among the CSPs. Section 2 gives the background on CFs and its challenges that prevent it from being commercialized.

Background
Requirements for Knowledge Management in Cloud Federations
Cloud Federation as a Strategic Alliance
Strategic Alliance Instability in the Context of Cloud Federations
Strategic Alliances and Knowledge Management in the Context of Cloud Federations
Strategic Alliances and Knowledge Protection in the Context of Cloud Federations
Knowledge Management Framework
Discussion and Future
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
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