Using the Balanced Scorecard Approach to Appraise the Performance of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are currently the two dominant Internet technologies, but cloud computing embodies the maturity of the computing field with its clear path to software generation, transmission, distribution and control. The growth and popularity of cloud-virtualized resources (infrastructure, platform and software), have been accompanied with an increase in cloud performance evaluation that could be used for decision-making. As reported in the literature, most of the evaluations and simulations tend to be one-dimensional that focus on easily measurable criteria such as load balancing and response time. This preliminary paper presents a more holistic approach using the technique of balanced scorecard that analyses cloud computing with respect to finance, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth perspectives. A critical analysis shows that cost reduction is not enough to cause a customer to embrace cloud computing. Other factors such as value proposition, internal and growth perspectives also play a role.