The Cloud Computing Competence Center (C4) within the ERCIS provides research and support in the area of cloud services with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). While there is a wide variety of cloud services available today and cloud service providers (CSPs) advertise their products as particularly attractive for smaller companies, SMEs are still reluctant in their adoption of cloud technology. Major reasons for this are:

• a lack of trust in the security of the cloud services and the CSPs,
• a lack of control over processes in the cloud, e. g., with regard to billing, but also with regard to data protection, as well as
• a lack of certainty about the legal compliance of the CSP and the cloud services with respect to contract design, accountability, and warranty.

In addition, there is a lack of clear economic models describing the benefits and drawbacks of cloud services as well as helpful strategies for migrating into the cloud.

Unlike many cloud research groups, C4 promotes research targeting the following questions:

• What measures on organizational, economic and legal levels can provide cloud users, particularly SMEs, with more trust into the CSPs? What form of organization is optimal for SMEs using cloud services? How can this be supported effectively by existing technology?
• How can the economic effects of (not) using cloud services be modeled and quantified?
• What are the key components of a successful cloud strategy for SMEs?  How should the strategy be designed and put to work in the enterprise?
• What influence do legal frameworks have on the current situation for European (and particularly German) SMEs that would like to use services from the cloud?

We invite you to browse these pages for a first impression of our research and to get to know the team and organizations involved.

Stay in touch

If you would like to stay up-to-date with news from C4, subscribe to our low-traffic newsletter. We send out occasional info mails about topics concerning the Cloud Computing Competence Center and related activities. Do not worry, though, we will limit this to a few emails per year.

In order to subscribe, simply send an email to ercis-c4-subscribe@listserv.uni-muenster.de and follow the instructions you'll receive in your inbox.