Attributes in Cloud Service Descriptions : A comprehensive Content Analysis

Abstract

The exponential growth of cloud services can make it challenging for customers to find the best available service. This problem is further aggregated by not comprehensive and non-standardized service descriptions on cloud providers’ websites. This issue has not yet been adequately researched. In response to this gap and following the call (Lehner & Floerecke, 2023) to analyse IT service catalogues directed toward external customers, the purpose of this work is to examine the attribute usage in customer-facing service descriptions available on providers’ websites. A literature review thereby identified 76 different attributes used for cloud service description. Although there are a vast number of attributes used for cloud service descriptions, a core of attributes that were named in most papers, could be detected. In a following step, a content analysis of 100 service descriptions available on cloud providers’ websites was performed to understand, how frequently each attribute was used in the cloud service description from Cloud providers in general and also differentiated by size, cloud service model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), and geographical location of the provider. The majority of attributes of the literature review could thereby be found in the content analysis as well. 15 more attributes have been added to the initial list as they could not be matched to any of the attributes from the literature. In addition, it could be verified that criteria such as size, service model, and geographical location have a significant impact on the attribute usage for service descriptions. Finally, expert interviews were conducted to get additional insights. The consent of the expert is that the main purpose of cloud service descriptions available on cloud providers’ websites is not necessarily to inform customers, but to attract and convince them. The insights of this work can provide valuable information to customers as well as cloud providers to understand, which attributes are currently used or not used for cloud service descriptions on provider’s websites. This research provides valuable information for both customers and cloud providers by identifying which attributes are currently used or not used for cloud service descriptions and can serve as a foundation for further research.