Transparency in Cloud Business: Cluster Analysis of Software as a Service Characteristics

Cloud Computing shapes the IS Outsourcing landscape and enables new flexible delivery models. It has become a fast growing and non-transparent market with many providers, including heterogeneous service portfolios and business models, especially for Software as a Service (SaaS). Many researchers focus exclusively on the technical aspects of Cloud Computing and ignore the business perspective. Unfortunately, the terms Cloud Computing and SaaS are not defined clearly and face customers with several challenges related to the decision-making process. This article explores the nature of SaaS from a business point of view and examines 100 providers in order to gain new insights about the transparency of their service offerings. A cluster analysis is conducted to examine dependencies between different provider information. The results indicate that only basic data like contact information, provider profile and service functionality are provided by all vendors, whereas pricing, support and security information are only covered by half of the providers.