Vendor Lock-in in the transistion to a Cloud Computing platform

Abstract: The thesis introduces a study about the vulnerabilities that a company as Scania IT faces towards vendor lock-in in the transition to a cloud computing platform. Cloud computing is a term that refers to anetwork of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage and process data, rather than on a local server or a personal computer. Vendor lock-in is an outcome that causes companies to pay a significant cost to move between cloud providers. The effects that cause vendor lock-in that will be described are portability, interoperability and federation are called the lock-in effects. The goal of the research is to help Scania IT understand the vendor lock-in and the vulnerabilities they can face in the transition to the cloud as well as to clarify the concern that they may have against falling in vendor lock-in. The main purpose of the research is to present the various lock-in effects that are related to the transition from one cloud provider to another and the vulnerabilities that cause companies to fall in vendor lock-in. The thesis presents the reasons that motivates why Scania IT would consider using the cloud and the concerns that they may have against usage of a cloud computing platform. The results will be based on a case study of a similar company that has moved to a cloud provider and specifically Microsoft Azure and an interview of Microsoft Azure point of view with the risk of vendor lock-in. Finally, a process of interviews with different people from Scania IT to extract the current bottleneck in the development process that caused the company to think of a cloud computing platform. The results show that companies should consider many risks and factors while moving to the cloud, as vendor lock-in, cloud maturity index and their IT strategies. As a result, the thesis gives recommendations of the steps needed to minimize the risks of the cloud while maintaining the positivity of the cloud.