**2. Related work**

In the study by Opara-Martins [8], the author has shown that the complexity of vendor lock-in that exists in the cloud environment, with the complexity of service offerings, makes it imperative for businesses to use a clear and well-understood decision process to procure, migrate and/or discontinue cloud services. Some of the existing cloud solutions for public and private companies are vendor locked-in by design, and their existence is subject to limited interoperate with other cloud systems [13]. There are several works that highlight vendor lock-in as a concern for cloud adoption and migration. The goal of this research is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the type of solution and motivation driving widespread adoption of cloud computing across institutions, enterprises and government parastatals. The approach of cloud computing is practical due to the combination of security features and online services. Cloud computing continues to be one of the most vital and fast-growing models of ICT. Researchers and practitioners have been actively reporting solutions and motivation with this new technology. The use of a specific cloud service during an application design may affect its maintenance and forthcoming migration requirements. The effort required to migrate an application from one cloud environment to another varies depending on the particular cloud service that it consumes. Any organisation that is considering the adoption of cloud services must start by identifying the

type of cloud service components it intends to take advantage of before starting plans for integration with existing enterprise networks. Therefore, enterprises' capability to ease switchability between cloud providers without any lock-in effect is important for its decision-making regarding service model adoption [14].

Prior to adopting cloud computing services, organisations must fully understand the impact they will have on existing business processes. The cloud service agreement is a documented agreement between the cloud service provider and cloud service customer that governs the covered services, while the cloud service level agreement is a part of the cloud service agreement that includes cloud service level objectives (i.e. commitment a cloud service provider makes for specific, quantitative characteristics of a cloud service. Where the value follows the interval scale or ratio scale) and cloud service qualitative objectives for the covered cloud service(s). Cloud service qualitative objective is the commitment a cloud service provider makes for a specific, qualitative characteristic of a cloud service, where the value follows the interval scale or ordinal scale. Therefore, a service level agreement (SLA) is a critical part of any service-oriented vendor contract. An SLA serves as an intermediary between the cloud service provider and a client organisation, while a cloud service broker is a service between cloud service customers and cloud service providers, in which the cloud service broker arbitrates, delivers and manages the cloud services from cloud service providers to cloud service customers. The SLA management is involved during the establishment of a cloud service agreement and manages cloud SLA by monitoring cloud services for cloud service level objective to verify the service level, by detecting failures to meet the terms of the cloud SLA through monitoring and by providing agreed remedies for failures to meet the terms of the cloud SLA. Cloud computing has the potential to transform a large part of the ICT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way ICT hardware is designed and purchased. Cloud services exist under a shared security environment and both cloud service providers and users contribute to the overall security [15]. Thus, a less secure cloud service provider can lock-in users by providing the means for creating value within the security umbrella. Cloud computing presents an added level of risk because essential services are often outsourced to a third party, which makes it harder to maintain data security and privacy, support data and services availability and demonstrate compliance.

A cloud computing system typically consists of the following components: data, applications, platforms and infrastructure. Data are the machine-processable representation of information stored in computer storage. Applications are computer programs that carry out tasks associated with solving business issues. Platforms are computer programs that enable applications and carry out generic, non-businessrelated tasks. Physical resources for processing, storage and communication make up the infrastructure. A data model that specifies the data's structure and includes metadata that the application can use to interpret elements of the data is the application data. Therefore, unless an application is standalone, the effort is needed to integrate it into a system. The degree of interoperability of an application can be measured as its cost of integration. Hence, understanding the theoretical framework described in this study is an important first step in understanding the remainder of the cloud lock-in parameters. Overall, a detailed understanding of these areas is required in the research field in order to make the correct decisions concerning cloud migration.

The research approach used in this study is mixed methods. Opara-Martins [8] carried out a study on cloud vendor lock-in from 2012 to 2016. In the survey, technical experts from a wide range of organisations were asked about their use of cloud

*Perspective Chapter: Cloud Lock-in Parameters – Service Adoption and Migration DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109601*

computing. The 114 business respondents, who represent organisations of various sizes in numerous industry verticals, include technical executives, managers and practitioners. Respondents are firms from a wide range of cloud-related industries, including both providers and consumers of cloud lock-in solutions. The survey also shows that as computing resources move from on-premise to the cloud environment, aspects like a contract (also referred to as commercial) lock-in are exacerbated to further complicate decision-making for/or against cloud adoption. Specifically, in this work [16], the author(s) discussed a number of technical and organisational factors that should be taken into account in order to assist businesses in enhancing their security posture, identifying and mitigating privacy-specific controls, and maintaining the flexibility to easily switch cloud providers (i.e., avoid lock-in), we will talk about a number of technical and organisational factors worth taking into consideration. This will increase ICT agility and business continuity. Their answers provide a comprehensive perspective on the state of the cloud today. The next section takes an unusual approach to further this study, whereas the subsections discuss the background and motivation for this study.

#### **2.1 Background**

Vendor lock-in is a topic of intense discussion in the ICT industry, and the general business community is now paying more attention to it. On the one hand, those who support open-source technology highlight the avoidance of vendor lock-in as a fundamental benefit. On the other hand, there are cloud service providers and suppliers of proprietary software who claim that vendor lock-in is nothing to worry about. Vendor lock-in has, according to some, always existed, and they are right. You will essentially be 'locked in' to the data centre operator, the hardware provider and, in the end, your engineer who operates and maintains it, even if you employ an engineer to create a specific solution internally. Any modification to such components will raise risks, extend project duration and raise costs. You might call this a lock-in. A growing problem is locating existing tools or adopting new ones that can lessen the effects of vendor lock-in. According to Satzger et al. [17], there are three types of solutions that have been suggested to mitigate vendor lock-in for the cloud, namely: (i) standards [18]; (ii) abstraction layers and adapters [19] and (iii) reducing accidental complexity, by adopting semantics and model-based solutions [20]. Based on these assertions, the chapter's contribution is also intended to provide new knowledge and greater depth to support organisations around the world in making informed decisions, ensuring that the migration and integration between on-premise and cloud happen with minimal disruption to business and results in maximum sustainable cost benefit.

#### **2.2 Motivation**

Fear of vendor lock-in is one of the main motivators for a multi-cloud strategy. When a consumer is 'locked in' to a single vendor for goods and services, it signifies that transferring to another vendor would be prohibitively expensive or disruptive to operations. Going all-in with a single vendor may enable you to streamline processes, increase your agility and maybe improve quality as single-vendor solutions are frequently better integrated. So, even while vendor lock-in has advantages in a perfect world, there is a serious potential for exorbitant expenditures. There are other issues as well, the technology you adore may be placed on hold or eliminated entirely when you are locked in since you are totally dependent on your vendor to drive innovation. This is particularly risky in our current 'as a service' world, when providers can decide to discontinue their product at any time, leaving you with few options and no time to transfer. Although utilising a single cloud provider plainly results in some dependence, you can migrate your data to any environment of your choice and only pay for the services you use. Therefore, your applications should be created or moved to be as flexible and loosely connected as possible to reduce the danger of vendor lock-in. The application components that communicate with cloud application components should be loosely coupled to them. Adopt a multi-cloud strategy as well. Consider putting the majority of your workloads in one cloud and the rest in another if your business requires the use of many vendors and the ensuing complexity is worth it. This will guarantee that you get some experience without suffering any negative effects. Additionally, if possible, employ automation to streamline processes and ensure consistency as later discussed in this chapter.

## **3. Systematic initial review**

The author has carried out a systematic initial review (SIR) of the existing literature regarding cloud lock-in, not only in order to summarise the existing solutions and motivations concerning this area of specialty but also to identify and analyse the current state and the most important areas for cloud computing. The aim of the SIR is to identify and relate gaps in knowledge as it pertains to cloud lock-in with possible solutions for the advancement of this knowledge domain.

Understanding what lock-in parameters are in cloud computing will help organisations to make the shift towards the cloud since it leverages many technologies and it also inherits their heterogeneous features. As described in this chapter, storage, applications, data, virtualisation and networks are the largest lock-in areas in cloud computing. Providers, end users and developers should consider the lock-in areas to take good advantage of the cloud. It is also essential to analyse compatibility issues such as database schema semantics and data types of the database so that there are no inconsistencies between the database layer before and after cloud migration.

Requirements for open, interoperable standards for cloud management interfaces and protocols, data and data formats will develop as more businesses create cloud adoption strategies and execution plans. As a result, cloud service providers will be under pressure to base their offerings on open, interoperable standards in order to be given serious consideration by businesses. Cloud computing promises to make switching to a different provider quick and easy, but that is only possible if users are careful to avoid provider lock-in. The reason because standards influence choice and choice influences the market, standard-based cloud services are essential for the development and dissemination of this paradigm. Third-party suppliers will be allowed to create and provide value-added management capabilities in the form of separate cloud management solutions in the presence of standards-based cloud offers. Vendors who already have ICT management tools available on the market would leverage such products to manage cloud solutions and hybrid cloud deployment. Due to the heterogeneity of the runtime environments, there are extra compatibility concerns when creating hybrid clouds based on legacy hardware and virtual public infrastructure. The X86 machine mode is supported by hypervisors, which can be a technical hurdle to a seamless transfer from private to public contexts.

In cloud lock-in conditions, a big installed base of a client is kept within the virtual infrastructure of one vendor, who does not reveal the intervals of their system, preventing the customer from shifting their installed base to another provider without

#### *Perspective Chapter: Cloud Lock-in Parameters – Service Adoption and Migration DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109601*

incurring a significant fee. The cloud service customer is a party that is in the business relationship for the purpose of using cloud services. Since most cloud offerings are proprietary, customers adopting the according services or adapting their respective applications to those environments are explicitly bound to the respective provider and other necessary parameters to support the migration. The amount of work a user is willing to put into transferring their skills to another environment, which typically involves reprogramming the corresponding programs limits their ability to move between providers. This makes the user dependent on both the provider's success and failure, as leaning too much on a single source might have major negative effects on service use [21]. In this respect, dependency, lock-in, privacy and security have been identified as a hurdle to cloud computing in companies and have been discussed in subsequent sections. The next subsection details the pragmatic approach used in this study.

## **3.1 Philosophical approach**

Adopting cloud computing is a complex decision involving many factors [12]. Although cloud-based offers are proliferating on the web and there is competition among cloud computing services, the rules and standards governing cloud computing are insufficient to provide customers with conditions of use ensuring that they will not experience lock-in situations or dependency with regard to the cloud computing providers. In fact, a client or another provider cannot always use the data formats and application interfaces used by a cloud computing service. Similarly, users want to be able to recover their data whenever they wish, without distortion or loss. Also, when it comes to recovering disputed data, the laws in the region where the data are physically located may present difficulties (act). All of these factors highlight the need for rules and standards that enable the interoperability and reversibility of the cloud computing ecosystem. The long-term development of cloud computing depends on this. Here again, it is evident that circumstances change, however, and as they become complex the simplifications can fail. However, this does not automatically imply that all new economic models brought about by cloud computing, whether for cloud service providers or for cloud service users, systematically guarantee significant financial gains. Due to the complexity of the cloud computing model, as it has been presently proposed, various outcomes of the corresponding economic analyses regarding the costs and benefits associated with adopting a cloud computing model have been found. This chapter is based on the *CYNEFIN* (pronounced ku-nev-in) framework, which allows executives to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities. The framework divides the problems that leaders face into five contexts based on how cause and effect relationships differ: four of these simple, complicated, complex and chaotic-demand that leaders analyse circumstances and take necessary action. When it is difficult to determine which of the other four contexts is dominating, the fifth context disorder applies [22].

Executives can avoid problems that arise when their preferred management style causes them to make poor decisions by using the CYNEFIN framework to help them to identify the context in which they are operating. The author's focus in this chapter is on the fifth context since the disorder is not uncommon in the cloud computing business world and this writing concentrates particularly on that context. Moreover, leaders who understand that the world is often irrational and unpredictable will find the *CYNEFIN* framework particularly useful and disorder makes it difficult to

recognise when one is in it. Effective leaders learn to shift their decision-making to match changing business environments.

Cloud environments provide a powerful and flexible computing option for many researchers. Now is the time for organisations and institutions to reassess, and in many cases, readjust their approaches to take full advantage of the agility, speed, scalability and availability of the cloud at a time when such capabilities are more important than ever. So when you look at cloud computing through an ethicist's eye, an economist's eye or with a policy dimension the impact of the decisions, we take now will have economic and societal impacts for generations to come [23]. In the following section, author will demystify the cloud paradigm with substantial evidence and undeniable facts.
