Abstract
M.Phil. (Engineering Management)
It is anticipated that in the next five years almost all aspects or services of Information Technology (IT)
will definitely be dynamic, movable, and interactive. This refers to data accessibility, workload, and all
other computing needs including resources. IT companies and organizations will be migrating IT
infrastructure, services, data, and software applications to Cloud services rapidly. Manufacturing and
engineering companies will definitely seek to optimize their Information Technology (IT) environments
and reduce high operational costs by adopting Cloud computing services at a rapid rate. Moreover, it is
projected that customers and end users will store and access hundreds of gigabytes of data. Cloud
computing is considered to be the best recent technology invention to fast track this gap. Cloud services
provide efficient IT services and facilitate on-demand access to shared pools of various computing
resources. As a result of these profound changes, all aspects of traditional Information Security (IS),
control standards and performance will be challenged, especially engineering systems (Manufacturing,
electronic, electrical, and control), engineering services, engineering processes, legacy applications and
on–premises systems. Furthermore, there are factors and risks impacting Cloud computing services
adoption rate that needs to be considered rigorously.
The primary objective of the study mainly focuses on investigating the factors affecting Cloud computing
adoption rate and risks associated with Cloud computing services adoption across board including
engineering and manufacturing sectors or domains. Furthermore, the study assesses the impact this has on
Information Technology (IT) services, engineering systems (Manufacturing, electronic, electrical and
control), process instrumentation and engineering services. The study begins by introducing Cloud
computing concept, and provides the background of Cloud computing. Secondly, it introduces the
research problem, objectives and maps the dissertation outline. In line with the main objective, this
research study also reviews existing information security policies, control standards and guidelines that
should be adopted to secure IT systems and Cloud services.
The study was mainly guided by literature review of previous studies (Peer reviewed articles, books,
journals, reports and surveys). Therefore, an extensive systematic literature review research methodology
method was applied on research articles that reported on factors affecting adoption of Cloud computing
services and the risks impacting Cloud computing implementation to collect and analyse data. Moreover,
Cloud computing’s reports prepared by reputable organizations are derived as part of other sources. These
reports are then selected and evaluated to determine the current status of Cloud computing adoption and
establish factors slowing Cloud adoption rate with an aim to assist potential Cloud services adopters.