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companies. New companies arise, new business models emerge. What
happens if companies do not move toward Cloud computing with their
enterprise and their organisation?
Innovations will be harder to adapt or leverage for such companies, as
future market and industry trends will be based on Cloud services and
require Cloud paradigms. A missing application makes it difficult to access
new innovations. The loss of speed and flexibility will mean losing some of
today's business if the enterprise has no access to the Cloud.
Today's rigid IT infrastructures offer very little flexibility. In addition,
typically only large and wealthy companies can afford the continual
investments necessary to operate the latest technologies. In other words,
"
business needs" require quickly available IT resources and dynamic
adaptation to the specific scenario. Against this background, it is essential
for companies to address the challenge of Cloud computing.
2.6
Cloud Quality and Certification
In accordance with the ISO 9000 series, the concept of quality can be
described as: a degree to which a set of objectively measurable
characteristics fulfils defined requirements. That sounds a little clumsy, but
it ultimately tells you whether capability is given based on previously
defined requirements.
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In the field of Cloud computing, this capability is first validated against
professional requirements, and only then in terms of security, data
protection, integration, and compliance as cross‐disciplinary requirements.
To carry out this kind of validation, one needs criteria and test
specifications, particularly in fields that are not identifiable from a business
point of view. Example question include, "Where is the data stored?”, "How
is the data protection requirement implemented?", "Can data be made fully
available once again after the end of the use?".
These are just a few of the topics that need to be investigated to ensure
concrete evaluation of Cloud service quality in terms of conformity with
requirements.
As such tests are typically expensive and require specific expertise on the
part of the test body, certifications now exist. They formulate general
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An expanded version of this chapter can be found under
