Evaluating efficiency of cloud service providers in era of digital technologies

Majid Azadi (), Mehdi Toloo (), Fahimeh Ramezani (), Reza Farzipoor Saen (), Farookh Khadeer Hussain () and Hajar Farnoudkia ()
Additional contact information
Majid Azadi: Aston University
Mehdi Toloo: University of Surrey
Fahimeh Ramezani: University of Technology Sydney
Reza Farzipoor Saen: Sultan Qaboos University
Farookh Khadeer Hussain: University of Technology Sydney
Hajar Farnoudkia: Baskent University

Annals of Operations Research, 2024, vol. 342, issue 2, No 2, 1049-1078

Abstract: Abstract The rapid growth of advanced technologies such as cloud computing in the Industry 4.0 era has provided numerous advantages. Cloud computing is one of the most significant technologies of Industry 4.0 for sustainable development. Numerous providers have developed various new services, which have become a crucial ingredient of information systems in many organizations. One of the challenges for cloud computing customers is evaluating potential providers. To date, considerable research has been undertaken to solve the problem of evaluating the efficiency of cloud service providers (CSPs). However, no study addresses the efficiency of providers in the context of an entire supply chain, where multiple services interact to achieve a business objective or goal. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a powerful method for efficiency measurement problems. However, the current models ignore undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data which can lead to inaccurate results. As such, the primary objective of this paper is to design a decision support system that accurately evaluates the efficiency of multiple CSPs in a supply chain. The current study incorporates undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data in a network DEA model for the efficiency measurement of service providers. The results from a case study illustrate the applicability of our new system. The results also show how taking undesirable outputs, integer-valued, and stochastic data into account changes the efficiency of service providers. The system is also able to provide the optimal composition of CSPs to suit a customer’s priorities and requirements.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; Efficiency evaluation; Cloud service providers; Two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-023-05257-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:annopr:v:342:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s10479-023-05257-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-023-05257-x

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().