Investment evaluation of cloud computing in the European business sector

The importance of cloud computing is acknowledged both at national and entrepreneurial level. Its potential in business has been already described in many studies (Dillon et al., 2010; Bayrak et al., 2011; Nuseibeh, 2011; Repschlaeger et al., 2013). However, many European countries do not exploit it much in spite of many positive responses made by respected consulting companies. The reasons for this are a very low level of changes in companies, ignorance of opportunities of the given technology and, consequently, an inability to count the return of investment. Therefore, the aim of this article is to introduce a tool for the investment evaluation of cloud computing, which corresponds to the needs of the European business environment and to the properties of this technology. Furthermore, the cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) method is explored. This method is adjusted for cloud computing on the basis of companies’ requirements, which were collected from quantitative and qualitative surveys and from the interviews with experts in cloud computing from academic and business environments. In addition, individual stages of the CBA method used in cloud computing are described.