Quantifying the Financial Value of Cloud Investments: A Systematic Literature Review

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. This paper conducts a multidisciplinary systematic literature review drawing from CS, IS, and Business disciplines to understand the current evidence on the quantification of financial value from cloud computing investments. The study identified 53 articles, which were coded in an analytical framework across six themes (measurement type, costs, benefits, adoption type, actor and service model). Future research directions were presented for each theme. The review highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research which both explores and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research, and research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios.