Development of a sustainable cloud service business model

Aim and

Cloud computing has become so important today that it is referred to as the fifth most common industry, after water, electricity, gas and telephone, and its development path is rapidly accelerating the entire IT infrastructure of a city or country. Introduction of new technologies such as IoT, mobile computing, health services, sensor networks and big data (Levitt, 2009; Free Iranian Cloud Computing Society, 2016). According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NISI), cloud computing is a model for providing access to a range of computing services and resources such as networks, servers, storage space, and applications on demand through the World Wide Web. It should be done quickly and with the minimum intervention of suppliers and sellers, and according to the needs of consumers, it can be prepared and used (Mel, 2011). A look at the statistics available on cloud computing technology highlights the importance of this field of technology. The authors believe that in a world moving towards sustainable development, sustainability is a winning strategy for business success (Francischelli, Santro and Candello, 2018). Therefore, introducing the business model of sustainable cloud services is one of the ways that can help companies in the cloud services industry to use this model and optimize it with their conditions and facilities to form their competitive advantage and in regional, national supply. And even compete internationally. Therefore, this research provides a framework that helps cloud service industry managers to strengthen their competitiveness in the market by identifying a sustainable business model suitable for their collection, as well as to develop competitive advantages and achieve optimal productivity.  Therefore, in the present study, we seek to identify the factors affecting the development of the cloud services business model to provide a new framework and add new components to the literature in this field.

The present study is a part of applied research. The strategy used in this research is content analysis. Content analysis is a process that leads to the analysis, summarization, classification and inference of specific features of the text. Considers content analysis to be a process of collecting, organizing, and standardizing. Content analysis is more important in humanities and social science research because of the ability to systematically analyze deeper and more complex information and comments, such as semi-instructional interview reports. In this study, exploratory interviews were conducted with 18 key informants to obtain the required information. The sampling process is purposeful and strategic and continues until the process of analysis and exploration reaches theoretical saturation.
 

From the interviews, a total of 245 initial conceptual propositions were obtained in the open coding stage. In the next coding stage, the final code was obtained by merging the obtained codes and removing the irrelevant and redundant items.
The results of the interview showed that sustainable cloud services have 5 main dimensions of economic, social, environmental, governance and ethical and business model design should be done by considering these 5 dimensions.
 Discussion and

The economic dimension refers to the production of goods and services as a prerequisite for improving living conditions; The social dimension refers to the equality of all human beings and their opportunities to access resources according to basic needs such as food, water and development through improved living conditions such as health care and education; The environmental dimension is related to the Earth ecosystem and the reduction of man-made carbon and the environmental imbalance created by the terms pollution, ozone layer, greenhouse gases, non-degradable waste, deforestation, overfishing, and The governance dimension is also related to the ways in which power is spent on managing economic and social resources for development. This issue theoretically dates back to 1990. In fact, when international aid agencies recognized that poor and developing countries were facing many obstacles to their economic development, the concept of governance also found its place as one of the drivers of economic growth and development in various economies. In the context of a favorable political and institutional environment that respects human rights, democratic principles, and the rule of law, good governance is the transparent and accountable management of human beings, nature, economic and financial resources for equitable and sustainable development. The fifth dimension of the identified components goes back to ethical issues; With the growth of information technology, the opportunity for immoral activities in the cloud has also increased and the need to control these activities has become a global concern. On the other hand, the pervasiveness of new computing technologies will transcend geographical areas and, if unable to protect individuals' privacy and pose threats to data security, will cause irreparable damage to the pervasiveness of services and concepts.
Business models express value propositions by identifying the market, identifying value chains, locating the company, combining assets for supply, and determining revenue mechanisms and cost structures.
The identified factors of the present study for the business model in the field of cloud services can be used as a modification of the concept of the usual business model with specific features 1) integration of concepts, principles and goals of sustainability in the sustainable business model and 2) integration of the concept of sustainability in the chain Value considered. Therefore; The main innovation of the present study is that a review of the research literature shows that three of the identified dimensions have been discussed separately in the literature, but two other important factors, which are the governance and ethical dimensions, are essentially in the model literature. Cloud business businesses have not been discussed and therefore it is considered as adding keywords to the cloud business literature. Therefore, in comparison; Findings of Sterwalder and Pignor (2010); Jericho and Forum (2009); Biswas (2015); Buchanan et al. (2014); Boken and Shorts (2016); Joyce and Pacquiao (2016); Gizman and Anchor (2016); Boya and Sinf Gill (2018); Gissdorfer et al. (2018); Ojala and Tirvanen (2011); Kozlowski et al. (2018); Bars et al. (2017); Dig and Egret (2018); Mousavi (2019); Kavichi and Wagononi (2020); Witt and Pilak (2020); Gani et al. (2020); Matilla et al. (2020); Da Silva et al. (2013); Dig and Eggert (2018) are in some ways consistent with the findings of the present study
One of the growing areas of Internet-based activities, both in the market and in people's personal lives, is cloud computing. Cloud service is an emerging technology that has attracted a lot of attention around the world in recent years, and this technology provides services through the Internet. The main purpose of this study is to design a conceptual model of sustainable cloud services business. Therefore, researchers in this study, using the qualitative research method and grounded theory strategy, have identified important factors and components related to the phenomenon of sustainable cloud businesses. After conducting 18 in-depth interviews with experts and specialists in the field of cloud services and sustainable development, 207 codes were floated in the open coding stage and 5 economic, social, and environmental, governance and ethical components were obtained in the central coding stage. Also in the selective coding phase, the 9 components of the Osterwalder business model, including customer segmentation, value proposition, customer relationships, distribution channels, key resources, key activities, revenue streams, cost structure and key partners linked to the five Identified component in axial coding phase and eventually a sustainable cloud services business model emerged.