Cloud computing is a new deployment model for IT services, which is going to substantially change the way organizations provision IT services. Clients who want to obtain IT services as cloud service have to gather all relevant information for decision making their selves. In the emerging market for cloud services this is quite a difficult task because clients have to rely on the service descriptions provided by cloud service providers, online market places, as well as information portals dedicated to cloud services. Unfortunately current service descriptions provided by cloud service vendors and information portals lack coherent and comprehensive information. We use group interviews with customer organizations in order to identify the service characteristics which serve as the primary basis for decision-making. Results reveal that those characteristics highly differ with regard to type of service, i.e., technical service or business service. Our findings help service providers to adjust their service descriptions to the information needs of prospective customers.     «

Cloud computing is a new deployment model for IT services, which is going to substantially change the way organizations provision IT services. Clients who want to obtain IT services as cloud service have to gather all relevant information for decision making their selves. In the emerging market for cloud services this is quite a difficult task because clients have to rely on the service descriptions provided by cloud service providers, online market places, as well as information portals dedicat...     »