APPLICATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING:
E-COMMERCE IN CHINA
LAHTI UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES
Bachelor of Business Administration Degree Programme in Business Information Technology
Spring 2019 Hong Peng
Abstract
Author(s) Hong, Peng
Type of publication Bachelor’s thesis
Published Spring 2019 Number of pages
58 Title of publication
Application of cloud computing: E-commerce in China
Name of Degree
Bachelor of Business Administration Abstract
The cloud computing industry is surging with the cloud computing development entering the second decades. The competition of public cloud services is becoming more and more fierce and the demand for private cloud services is increasing. Hybrid clouds are becoming the mainstream mode of cloud computing. This trend that extends from the Internet sector to other industries, and it is foreseeable that cloud computing will face various opportunities and challenges when entering the industry.
This thesis firstly describes the inevitable trend of cloud computing development.
Then it introduces the development status of cloud computing in China and abroad.
The thesis focuses on the development background of cloud computing in a typical industry of E-commerce. It analyses the challenges and concerns of industry users and summarizes the security issues facing the development of cloud computing. The thesis uses deductive methods, in addition to qualitative and quantitative research.
The data comes from a questionnaire. Finally, it gives recommendations for the future development of the cloud computing industry.
Keywords
Cloud Computing, E-commerce, Internet Technology Development
1 INTRODUCTION ... 1
1.1 Research Background………..2
1.2 Structure of Thesis………2
2 RESEARCH METHODS ... 4
2.1 Objectives and Approach…………..………..4
2.2 Methodology………..………4
2.3 Framework………….………...5
3 CLOUD COMPUTING ... 7
3.1 The Inevitable Trend of Cloud Computing Development………...7
3.1.1 The Needs for ICT Resources are Decresing ... 7
3.1.2 The Infrastructure of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence ... 8
3.1.3 Cloud Computing Has Become the Core Support ... 9
3.2 The Status of The Future Development………..10
3.2.1 The Trust for Cloud Services ... 10
3.2.2 Hybrid Computing Becomes an Improtant Trend in the Future ... 10
3.2.3 The Era of Giants and Ecological Competition for Cloud Service Provider . 11 3.3 The Status of Current Development………12
3.3.1 Global Cloud Computing Market Development ... 12
3.3.2 China's Cloud Computing Market Development ... 14
4 THE APPLICATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN E-COMMERCE IN CHINA ... 17
4.1 The Background in China ……….17
4.2 The Status of the Application of Cloud Computing in E-commerce………...18
4.3 The Challege………...21
4.4 The Opportunity………..23
4.5 The Case………..24
4.5.1 Tencent Company Profile ... 24
5 SECURITY ISSUES FACING CLOUD COMPUTING DEVELOPMENT ... 27
5.1 Cloud Computing Security Issues………27
5.2 Cloud Computing Security Standards Organization……….27
5.3 Typical Cloud Computing Security Architecture………28
5.3.2 Trusted Cloud Architecture ... 29
5.3.3 Other Cloud Security Frameworks ... 30
5.4 Cloud Computing Security Key Technologies………31
5.4.1 Identity Management and Access Control ... 31
5.4.2 Security Audit ... 31
5.4.3 Virtualization Security ... 31
5.4.4 Data Protection ... 32
5.4.5 Trusted Cloud Computing ... 32
6 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH AND DATA ANALYSIS………...34
6.1 Data Collection……….…..34
6.2 Formulation of the Questionnaire……….…………...34
6.3 Analysis of Questionnaire……….…34
7 CONLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... 42
7.1 Answers to the Research Questions……….…..43
7.2 Rcommendations……….………...44
LIST OF REFERENCES ... 46
APPENDICES……….50
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST 2019) defines cloud computing as "a ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand approach to a shared, configurable
computing resource (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). A network access model that enables rapid provision and release of computing resources with minimal management or interaction with service providers. (Mell & Grance 2009, 38.)"
According to the definition of NIST (2019), cloud computing has five key features: 1) self- service on demand, users automatically configure computing power when needed; 2) width access, use the network to support various standard access methods; 3) virtualized the resource “pool” dynamically allocates and manages physical and virtual resources according to user needs; 4) flexible architecture, services can be quickly and flexibly supplied; 5) measurable services.
Cloud computing has three typical delivery models: 1) Software as a Service (SaaS), which provides users with the ability to use applications in a serviced manner; 2) Platform as a Service (PaaS), which provides users with cloud infrastructure. The ability to deploy and use the development environment; 3) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which provides users with the ability to use processors, storage, networking, and other basic computing resources in a service-oriented manner. (NIST 2019.)
Cloud computing has four deployment models: 1) public cloud, that is, a cloud that provides services to external customers, there are no specific restrictions on service objects; 2) private cloud, that is, a cloud platform dedicated to internal use, does not provide services; 3) A community cloud, where the cloud infrastructure is shared by multiple organizations to support a particular community; 4) a hybrid cloud, the cloud infrastructure consisting of two or more clouds. (NIST 2019.)
After more than decade of development, cloud computing has gradually moved from the concept phase to the practical phase. According to statistics, in 2006, 98% of the 29 million IT workloads in the world were completed on traditional IT, while only 2% in the cloud. By 2016, the global IT workload increased to 160 million. Among them, the proportion of traditional IT, public cloud, and private cloud has reached 73%, 15%, and 12%. (CAICT 2017, 1.) The IT load carried on the cloud has accounted for more than a quarter.
Over the years, the industry has deepened its understanding and definition of cloud
computing and it has also brought about profound changes in the IT industry. From a technical perspective, cloud computing is a revolutionary advancement in large-scale information systems. Cloud computing technology brings a new generation of information systems that are larger, more efficient (faster and more stable) enabling a more flexible system architecture, more sophisticated system operations and closer to the user's environment. From an ideology perspective, cloud computing is the transformation of information construction from building facilities to seeking services. Cloud computing emphasizes user-driven, demand-driven, on-demand services and pay-as-you-go. It has the advantages of specialization, scale and significant cost driving users to change from ICT consumption mode to service mode. From the perspective of impact, cloud computing has become an information infrastructure with technologies such as big data, the Internet and artificial intelligence. With its low cost, convenience and high scalability, cloud
computing provides a practical technical guarantee for the development of big data, Internet and artificial intelligence. (CAICT 2017,1.)
1.2 Structure of Thesis
This thesis is divided into five different parts: introduction, research methods, cloud computing, the application of cloud computing in e-business, security issues facing cloud computing development and cloud computing industry development recommendations.
The first part will introduce this thesis. The introduction will explain briefly why cloud computing and its application is getting more important. This chapter will focus on describing the objective of the thesis and how the thesis is structured.
The second part will be given a brief look at how the research is approached and conducted to help building up the thesis and answer the research questions which address in this paper.
The third part will offer basic insight and information on cloud computing as well as why cloud computing is a crucial thing in information technology and social development. This chapter will provide theoretical background about cloud computing and its cardinal feathers. The current and future development will also be discussed in this part.
The fourth part is the most significant part of the thesis as it will explain the application of cloud computing in e-business. It will introduce the background of the application of cloud computing in e-business internationally and in China. In addition, an analysis for the challenge and the opportunity will help readers figure out what benefit and shortcomings when use cloud computing in E-commerce.
The part of five is the empirical research and data analysis. The data are analyzed and then going forward on to the sixth chapter the research questions are answered. There will be a discussion about the reliability of the collected data in thischapter is the
introduction to the research background, the thesis objectives, thesis and suggestions for further research.
The part of six will be the conclusion and security issues facing cloud computing development. The chapter will attend to the data security, virtualization security,
application security and service availability. Finally, the last part will discuss the possible recommendations for the development of cloud computing industry.
2 RESEARCH METHODS
This section of the thesis will show what type of search methods have been adopted to finish this research as well as how the authors’ objectives and how the research is approached.
2.1 Objectives and Approach
The main objective of the thesis is to give valuable information about cloud computing and how E-commerce can utilize it beneficially. This objective will be achieved through
understandable knowledge of what cloud computing is as well as the application of cloud computing in E-commerce. Therefore, this paper can also help E-commerce industry recognizing what is the strength when E-commerce has cloud computing and what’s thing should be avoid.
This thesis will use the deductive method to approach the topic of the application of cloud computing. The research will answer the main research question:
what has happened to the application of cloud computing in E-commerce especially in China?
The thesis will experiment with the whole understanding of cloud computing to help clarify the utilization of the application of cloud computing in E-commerce. In addition, to help reaching the answer for the main research question, the research will concentrate in exploring cloud computing and E-commerce. Furthermore, security issues facing cloud computing development and cloud computing industry development recommendations will be demonstration.
2.2 Methodology
As the purpose of this study is to understand the application of cloud computing especially in E-commerce, this thesis will utilize the deductive approach. The essays, reports and studies related to subject are taken from different printed books and online sources. The information gathered from questionnaire will be used in this thesis as primary sources.
Qualitative research methods are designed in a manner that they help reveal the behavior and perception of a target audience with reference to particular topic (Bhat 2019). This thesis will use the certain survey to gather the information and attitude from E-commerce company employees towards cloud computing, which understand what people think and
perceive. Under in-depth interviews with respondents to gain an in-depth understanding more about the application of Cloud computing in industry of E-commerce is the target of qualitative research methods.
Many qualitative studies work in the inference mode beginning with a theory. It
systematically collecting and examining data to see whether the theory is supported or rejected or modified. The first understand of cloud computing and the application in E- commerce will be studied and presented. This will help constructing the connection bridge between cloud computing and E-commerce.
The deduction reasoning begins with the general aspect and ends at a specific level.
Experimental or observational arguments are expressed in an inductive way, while arguing based on the most widely accepted law, rule or principle. (Bradford, 2017.) All in all, the deductive research approach and qualitative and quantitative research methods will be applied in this thesis. All the data comes from primary and secondary resources. Choosing the research approach and research methods can be vital for a thesis. The reason for choosing which is the call of the topic of the application of cloud computing in E-commerce.
2.3 Framework
This research will be divided into three phases. The first phase is the cloud computing part. it will explain the key concepts surrounding cloud computing and its phenomenon.
This part will first go through the concept of cloud computing, explaining the inevitable trend of cloud computing development. The reason why cloud computing has become the core support of the traditional industry to the internet. Next, this part will illustrate the importance of using cloud computing. This will ensure the understanding of how cloud computing connect to E-commerce before moving on to the next phase.
The second phase is the implement part. This part will show the possibilities of the application of cloud computing in E-commerce. It first claims the background of the application of cloud computing in E-commerce in China and shows the status of the application of cloud computing in E-commerce. Analyzing the challenge and the
opportunity. Finally using a Chinese mainland company, Tencent, as an example to show the status. As discussed in the introduction, the thesis uses primary and secondary data.
It also uses qualitative and quantitative research methods. The primary data will be taken from a questionnaire that directly comes from the questionnaire.
The final phase is security issues facing cloud computing development and cloud computing industry development recommendations. This part will list the problems in application of cloud computing and how to avoid those problems.
3 CLOUD COMPUTING
3.1 The Inevitable Trend of Cloud Computing Development 3.1.1 The Needs for ICT Resources are Decreasing
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the dependence and demand of ICT resources by society, enterprises and citizens has grown exponentially with the rise of the fourth
industrial revolution. The information economy, also known as the digital economy, has become a new economic form, an important driving force for transformation and
upgrading and a commanding height for a new round of global industry competition. As an important infrastructure of the entire information economy, cloud computing has reshaped the working mode of ICT in the whole society from the aspects of ICT resource acquisition and the concept of acquiring ICT resources.
First, cloud computing has changed the way users access ICT resources from the
independent construction of ICT facilities to the search for social public ICT services. ICT equipment and systems for enterprises and individual users are traditionally purchased, built and maintained by users. This decentralized ICT resource construction and usage model not only increases the user’s informatization cost, but also reduces the overall society resource utilization efficiency as a whole. The details can be seen from Figure 1 that shows the cloud computing is a sourcing pool. In the era of big data, the inefficiencies and high-cost drawbacks of traditional ICT resource construction methods have become increasingly prominent. Not only do they require a large amount of investment in the construction of IT infrastructure also they are becoming larger and more complex and more functional. The more operations and management of IT infrastructure are becoming an important factor that constrains the further development of enterprises.
A cloud eliminates the need for up-front financial commitment, and it is based on a pay- as-you-go approach. This has the potential to attract new application and new users for existing applications, fomenting a new era of industrywide technological advancements (Marinescu 2013, 10). The need for flexibility and other aspects has driven users to shift from the ICT consumption model that they have built for their own use to the social service model.
Second, cloud computing has become an important direction for ICT service transformation. Cloud computing makes ICT capabilities no longer encapsulated in
specific products but presented in the form of social services. As a key link between users and applications, cloud computing service providers have gradually become an important
force in the industrial structure by relying on user demand perception and information resources. They influence and lead users' needs, and influence and drive the evolution and development of hardware and software manufacturing. In turn, the leadership of the industry chain is formed the vertical integration between the cloud computing service industry and the manufacturing industry. The mutual extension of the industrial chain is promoted so that the industry presents a pattern of integration of manufacturing services.
The traditional software format is finally served.
Cloud computing changes the direction of ICT industry technology and product
development. In the hardware field, the market growth rate of high-performance servers and minicomputers will gradually decrease. The relatively cheap X86 servers will increase their shipments in the public cloud field. The cloud computing hyper-converged servers are developing rapidly in the enterprise-class private cloud market. In the software field, the basic software for building a cloud platform will become the main product of the basic software market; traditional desktop applications will be transformed into networked online application software.
Figure 1: Cloud-computing (kreyonsystems 2019)
3.1.2 The Infrastructure of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
The technologies of cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence are naturally coupled and inseparable. Cloud computing provides powerful computing and storage capabilities for massive data. Artificial intelligence must rely on the powerful computing power of cloud computing for training, reasoning and prediction. Big data provides massive computing and test data for artificial intelligence training, reasoning and prediction.
Big data is supported by cloud computing, which is so large normally cannot be processed sequentially in a reasonable amount of time. The data is broken up into chunks, which are analyzed by a set of processes running in parallel (Murugesan 2015, 543). The emergence of cloud computing can provide accurate analysis and flexible computing capabilities for big data generated by various industries, which provide practical value for people's work and life in the future. Today, how to effectively store and analyze these big data will become a very difficult problem when ICT resources and services are
outbreaking. Cloud computing can be understood as a technology that integrates many weak servers through the network to form a capability, powerful, dynamically scalable resource pool to complete tasks. Cloud computing provides technically or economically a very good technical means for the era of the Internet of everything enabling us to cope with data torrents with ease.
There are two main reasons for artificial intelligence to enter the explosive growth state again. First, the rapid development of big data provides a huge amount of data for the training and prediction of artificial intelligence. The development of various types of sensors, Internet applications, data acquisition and storage technologies has given us massive amounts of data that were unimaginable. We have begun to have in-depth and detailed data in a certain field. These are all prerequisites for training "smart" in a certain field.
Second, the widespread use of cloud computing provides near-infinite computing power for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence technology is based on neural networks for deep machine learning. Compared with the previous algorithms, this algorithm completely uses the input data to simulate and construct the corresponding model structure. It has the advantages of flexibility and self-optimization according to different training data. But this advantage comes with a significantly increased amount of computation. Before the breakthrough in computer computing power, such an algorithm has almost no practical value. However, the high computing power in cloud computing has become an important technical guarantee for the development of artificial intelligence.
3.1.3 Cloud Computing Has Become the Core Support of the Traditional Industry to the Internet
China's cloud computing is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. It has extended and expanded to many fields such as manufacturing, finance, government, medical care and education. By integrating various resources, it promotes efficient docking of upstream and downstream industries and realizes traditional industries Integrate with information technology. At present, the application of cloud computing is
changing from the Internet industry such as games, E-commerce, mobile, social etc. to manufacturing, government, finance, transportation, medical health and other traditional industries.
The government and financial industry are becoming the main breakthroughs. Statistics from relevant departments such as the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development show that before the end of this year, the number of smart cities based on government cloud under construct and built in China is expected to exceed 500. For example, Weihai's government cloud, Shang Dong province. Weihai City commissioned the backbone IT enterprise to build a unified platform "Weihai Cloud Computing Center". Based on this, the government achieved information by established subsystems of finance, transportation, fire, electricity, medical and other departments. Resource Sharing. (PR 2017.) Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud and other companies have begun to serve well- known financial institutions such as Bank of China, Guang Fa Bank, Sunshine Insurance, Zhong An Insurance, Galaxy Securities, Lu Jin, etc. The service model is divided into financial public cloud and financial specialization. There are models such as cloud, which ultimately provide services to financial institutions in the form of public, hybrid and private clouds.
3.2 The Status of the Future Development 3.2.1 The Trust for Cloud Services
It is normal for users to have a distrust of cloud services in the early days of cloud computing. In the IDC Global Survey, more than 70% of users are skeptical about cloud computing security, performance and reliability. In the special survey on the use of cloud services, Chinese users have great concern about the stability and security of cloud services. The three primary considerations when users choose cloud service providers are stability, security and network quality. It is precisely because China has not yet established a trust system based on policy and regulatory policies.
Based on cloud services security, service quality and other related technologies and standards, using authentication are the main method, which leads users to choose cloud services with big concerns.
3.2.2 Hybrid Computing Becomes an Important Trend in the Future
The combination of public and private clouds has become a hybrid cloud. More and more commercial cloud solutions are being adopted by enterprises. After several years of development of cloud services, enterprises have increasingly accepted the use of cloud
services to solve their own IT infrastructure capabilities. However, more and more companies have found that there is no comprehensive universal solution in the market that can solve all the problems of enterprises. They must choose different technologies to meet their needs.
The advantage of a hybrid cloud is that it can adapt to different platform requirements providing both the security of a private cloud and the openness of a public cloud. In the future, it will also be the mainstream mode of cloud services adopted by enterprises. The reason is that by using hybrid cloud organizations can more flexibly choose the cloud deployment model for each department's workload. People have summarized three benefits of using a hybrid cloud: improving data management, improving IT infrastructure management and flexibility, and enhancing security and compliance. We predict that in the future, as the demand for cloud computing related to customers will be further released. It is difficult for a company to fully occupy the leading position in all levels of services, various industry fields, and various functional directions. Public cloud or the proprietary cloud can't meet the enterprise's consideration of the cost and security of the IT system so that the hybrid cloud plays an increasingly important role in the enterprise cloud market. (IDCS 2018.)
3.2.3 The Era of Giants and Ecological Competition for Cloud Service Provider
Cloud computing itself is a big ecosystem. For cloud service giants at home and abroad including Amazon, Microsoft, domestic Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and other service providers, they will focus on their respective applications with equipment vendors and systems after completing the cloud computing from theory to practical application.
Integrators and independent software developers jointly provide one-stop services for enterprises and governments, and jointly build an ecosystem becomes an important direction for the future development of cloud computing.
At the Yunqi Conference Shenzhen Summit on March 29, 2017, Alibaba Cloud Market released several latest data of Alibaba Cloud Ecology: Alibaba Cloud Market applied for nearly 1,000 cooperative service providers in the first quarter. More than 1,000 software service providers such as Yunmeng, Anhuajin and others have chosen to cooperate with Alibaba Cloud. More than 100 service providers will work with thousands of existing companies including joining forces to promote new real economy with new technologies and new resources. On June 21, 2017, at Tencent Cloud+ Future Summit, Tencent Cloud released several data: With the rapid growth of Tencent Cloud Ecology, the number of partners increased by 445%, the number of partners' customers increased by 238%.
Business revenue increased by 560%. In the process of building a partner's ecological
environment, Tencent Cloud uses its superior Internet capabilities to focus on
“connectors”. At present, Tencent Cloud has more than 200 types of development partners through cooperation with leading companies such as Shenma, Donghua, Neusoft, Zhongke Soft, Changliang, Sidi and Zhongke Ocean for transportation,
government affairs and poverty alleviation. Providing solutions for customers in all walks of life such as public security, tourism, insurance, documents, and industry. (CAICT 2017,9.)
The AWS (AWS 2019) Partner Program, or APN, is a global partner program launched by AWS. The program is designed to help partners achieve business success with AWS and achieve this by providing superior business, technology, marketing and GTM support.
It is understood that APN has increased more than 10,000+ partners in the past 12 months; more than 60% of its partners are from outside the US; AWS consulting partners have increased by 110% year-on-year; AWS Management Services Partners A year-on- year increase of 130%; more than 90% of Fortune 100 customers use APN partner programs and services. By building an “eco-shared” entrepreneurial platform, Microsoft has integrated its strong resources in global R&D, marketing, and business, to build a comprehensive strategic partnership alliance to help startup teams achieve rapid adoption and reduce trial and error costs with Microsoft Azure cloud service platform and related industry solutions. (CAICT 2017,9.)
3.3 The Status of Current Development
3.3.1 Global Cloud Computing Market Development
The global cloud computing market continues to grow overall. In 2016, the typical cloud service market represented by IaaS, PaaS and SaaS reached US$65.48 billion, a growth rate of 25.4%. It is expected to reach US$143.53 billion in 2020 with a compound annual growth rate of 21.7%. (CAICT 2017, 11.) It can be seen from Figure 2 and Figure 3.
Figure 2: Global shared cloud service revenue forecast (Gartner 2018)
Figure 3: Global cloud computing market size (Gartner 2017)
The United States has a solid leadership position in the global cloud computing market.
As the first move of cloud computing, the market still dominates in North America. In 2016,
the US cloud computing market accounted for 54.1% of the global market share, with a growth rate of 19.8%. It is expected to grow at a rate of more than 15% in the next few years.
From the perspective of service providers, Amazon AWS 2016 revenue is 12.2 billion US dollars and the growth rate exceeded 54% Data center layout in the US, Europe, Brazil, Singapore, Japan and Australia served in 190 countries and regions around the world.
Microsoft's growth as a cloud computing company, Azure cloud service growth rate
increased by 93% over the same period, 1.7 times that of AWS cloud services. Microsoft's huge investment in cloud computing data center, which has enabled Microsoft to reach 38 data centers worldwide. (CAICT 2017, 11.)
3.3.2 China's Cloud Computing Market Development
China's cloud computing market as a whole maintains a high-speed growth trend. In 2016, China's cloud computing overall market reached 51.49 billion yuan with an overall growth rate of 35.9% higher than the global average. Among them, the private cloud market size is 34.48 billion yuan with an annual growth rate of 25.1%. It is expected that the growth rate will still reach 23.4% in 2017 and the market size will reach about 42.5 billion yuan.
(CAICT 2017,12.)
In 2016, the overall size of China's public cloud service market was about RMB 17.01 billion, an increase of 66.0% over 2015. It is expected that China's public cloud market will maintain a high growth trend from 2017 to 2020 and the market size will reach 60.36 billion yuan by 2020. The below is the figure of China's private cloud market size and growth rate and China's public cloud market size and growth rate. (CAICT 2017, 12.)
Figure 4: China's private cloud market size and growth rate (unit: 100 million yuan) (CAICT 2017, 21)
Figure 5: China's public cloud market size and growth rate (unit: 100 million yuan) (CAICT 2017, 21)
The hardware market in China’s private cloud market still dominates. In the private cloud market in 2016, the hardware market was 24.72 billion Yuan accounting for 71.7%, the software market was 5.31 billion yuan and the service market were 4.45 billion yuan.
According to CAICT survey statistics, the proportion of enterprises deploying private clouds by means of separately purchasing software and services has increased
significantly. More than 80% of enterprises deploying private clouds choose open source software. The Figure 6 is the China’s private cloud market composition. OpenStack has become the mainstream cloud resource management platform. The main application scenario of the private cloud is the internal IT system of the enterprise. The enterprise has achieved obvious effects after deploying the private cloud including the improvement of IT operation efficiency, the reduction of IT cost and the reduction of IT operation and
maintenance workload. The enterprise will further increase Investing in the field of private clouds. (CAICT 2017,12)
Figure 6: China’s private cloud market composition (CAICT 2017, 24)
The IaaS market is growing at a high rate. In 2016, the domestic IaaS market is still the first choice for IT resources construction in small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of video, games and mobile internet. The market size reached 8.74 billion yuan, an increase of 108.1% compared with 2015. It is expected to maintain a high growth in 2017.
Among the enterprises that have been applied, the products purchased by enterprises are mainly concentrated on IaaS basic resources such as cloud hosts and cloud storage. The applications to PaaS and SaaS are relatively few. It can be seen from Figure 7. (CAICT 2017, 24)
Figure 7: Size of public cloud market segment (unit: 100 million yuan) (CAICT 2017, 24)
4 THE APPLICATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN CHINA
4.1 The Background of the Application of Cloud Computing in E-commerce in China
In 2011, Internet information fragmentation and cloud computing technology became more mature. As the third wave of technology, cloud computing brought fundamental changes to life, production mode and business model. The emergence of the active digital
marketing model has enabled E-commerce to get rid of the status of the traditional sales model and move to the Internet. It communicates with users through active, interactive and user-oriented way. The in-depth application of E-commerce in the cloud makes E- commerce to be the first area of cloud computing applications.
First, E-commerce has a strong demand for cloud computing. E-commerce usually attracts netizens (Huaben 2015) with ultra-low prices and diversity products. From the perspective of E-commerce traffic, the server will be blocked or even collapsed when facing many netizens logging in at the same time if there is not enough technical
preparation. Cloud computing can solve this problem with processing massive amounts of data at the same time. If the cloud is not used, the enterprise itself must have sufficient computing power and storage capacity to cope. E-commerce companies are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. Cloud computing has a flexible delivery service and charging model. SMEs (BIGCOMMERCE 2019) can flexibly expand IT resources according to changes in their business needs avoiding redundancy and waste of resources. The first international launch of cloud computing services is Google and Amazon. Amazon is an E-commerce company, and now he wants to combine E- commerce and cloud computing. Amazon Web Services (AWS 2019) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments, on a paid subscription basis. The technology allows subscribers to have at their disposal a virtual computer cluster available all the time through the
Internet. Amazon leased these devices and network storage space to other E-commerce companies. Many companies are reluctant to start E-commerce because they need to invest more IT resources at the beginning. Amazon's unintentional enthusiasm has won the favor of enterprises. Amazon began to add more configuration by building a larger cloud and providing E-commerce enterprises with a full set of services from the background to the front desk which slowly evolved into Amazon's cloud computing.
(Amazon 2019.)
Secondly, various regions of the country have established cloud computing platform services for E-commerce enterprises. An online shopping platform based on the principle of cloud computing can bring network products and application services together in various fields. User information processing, online shopping, information, games and other network requirements can be integrated at one stop. Therefore, cloud computing can not only solve the problem of data processing but also bring integrated services, which greatly attracts the attention of various E-commerce companies. E-commerce tycoons such as Alibaba, eBay, and Amazon are the first to plug in cloud computing.
Various regions have also launched local cloud service platforms to provide services for E-commerce companies. For example, the first public service platform in the country used cloud computing technology to serve the E-commerce industry. The West Lake cloud computing public service platform was established. Five companies from Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou will become the customers of the platform in the first place.
Software companies such as Kingdee and Golden Abacus have launched full-scale E- commerce and established service platforms in various places, which has greatly promoted the application of E-commerce enterprises in the cloud.
Third, the trend of phone end of E-commerce drives the demand for cloud computing.
According to the data (chyxx 2018), China's mobile Internet market reached 6.44 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2011, a year-on-year increase of 43.4%. In the market segmentation pattern, the mobile value-added market to maintain a leading edge with 55.6% advantage. Mobile phone E-commerce performance is more prominent accounting for 21.6%. Mobile E-commerce combines technologies such as the Internet, mobile communications, and short-range communications to enable people to conduct online and offline shopping and transactions, online electronic payments, and participate in various business activities and financial activities at any time and any place. Since more
applications of mobile E-commerce are in the background of data processing coupled with a large mobile user community, there is no time and place constraints. The data that the system needs to process at the same time is larger and more complex, and more support for cloud computing at this time.
4.2 The Status of the Application of Cloud Computing in E-commerce As a popular business model, E-commerce has always been an area favored by
investors. Many advanced technologies and funds have flowed to this industry. “Big Data”
and “cloud computing” are no exception. Some companies have begun to try to build E- commerce cloud platform based on Big Data. There are three reasons. First, cloud computing brings lower infrastructure costs. Companies can use their capabilities to
supplement or replace internal computing resources. The company does not have to worry about flow traffic issues. Second, cloud computing has higher performance compared with other equipment. Companies do not need to invest a lot of money to buy high-performance computers, while the cloud provides almost unlimited storage capacity.
Third, cloud computing can easily achieve internal sharing and collaboration between enterprises. It can be truly real-time, fast and accurate. Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alibaba have joined the development of cloud computing at present. Alibaba
established the "Alibaba Cloud" subsidiary in 2009. IBM launched the Blue Cloud project.
Microsoft launched Windows Azure (Blue sky) operating system.
The challenge with ecommerce is that customers often browse anonymously for an extended period of time before they identify them by logging in. Most large websites force you to log in immediately (e.g., social media, email online banking) or not at all (news, search engines, Wikipedia). When log in to an E-commerce website, the customer has to merge everything that happened throughout the session with the data that’s been
persisted about the customer. (Goetsch 2014, 145.) The e-commerce transaction platform has also a strong burst of concurrency. In Figure 8 below, it can be seen the E-commerce traffic funnel. In severe cases, there will be service interruptions. At certain moments, the server will cause an incalculable economic loss to the enterprise. In view of this, E- commerce companies began to focus on the use of big data processing technology to build E-commerce cloud platform by using cloud computing to ensure the security of electronic transactions. For example, the “Double Eleven” online activity held by Taobao every year has a huge amount of hits and a lot of unexpected events. Therefore, Alibaba uses cloud computing to ensure that customers can browse, place orders and purchase on the online store. Although cloud computing technology is gradually developing and improving. It is necessary to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing for enterprises when choosing cloud services. Because it may bring many issues related to security, standards and privacy. At this point, the correct way to build an E-commerce cloud platform should be to use big data processing technology. Big Data's powerful information retrieval service function, accurate data analysis and rapid elastic processing capabilities should be full used in actual activities. The storage platform maximizes the related management and control capabilities of resources, thereby improve the efficiency of enterprise operations and data security.
Figure 8: ecommerce traffic funnel (Goetsch 2014,145)
In general, cloud computing has three service models: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. For
example, IBM's blue cloud project launched by Kingdee Group with the help of technology and platform advantages. This plan is intended to change the traditional software service model. Amazon is the most successful listed company using cloud computing technology to conduct E-commerce. Later, giant Internet companies such as Apple and Verizon are engaged in "cloud computing" services. In China, Alibaba started the layout of “Big Data”
and “Cloud Computing” as early as 2008. Alibaba introduced E-commerce services into Alibaba Cloud to connect individual users with E-commerce companies so that the E- commerce model of enterprises can be changed from the bottom. After that, other E- commerce companies such as Jing Dong, Suning Tesco, Dangdang, No. 1 Store are also investing in “Big Data” and cloud computing applying the existing results to the daily transactions of E-commerce. For SMEs in E-commerce, they apply “big data” and “cloud computing” to data storage services, information sharing, business collaboration and customer groups.
The diversification and complication of data will be an important issue for E-commerce companies. Enterprises can effectively process big data with low input with the cloud platform. The platform also can help enterprises analyze the data of user behavior and conduct reliable security real-time monitoring. It can also strengthen information sharing and business collaboration to achieve enterprise performance improvement.
4.3 The Challenge
Cloud computing will become the business model chosen by E-commerce companies in the era of big data. Its essence is data processing technology. Data is an asset. The cloud provides a place and channel for data assets to be kept and accessed.
At present, the two prominent problems facing the development of China's E-commerce are the cost and homogenization competition. The arrival of the era of big data will provide a new way for its development and competition including specific products and service forms enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises through individualized innovation.
Alibaba as an example, Alibaba cloud has integrated its resources into Taobao, Tmall, Alibaba Cloud, Alipay, Wanwang and other business platforms in order to form a strong E- commerce customer base and integrate entire industry customer chain information
creating unique data processing capabilities. (Alibaba 2018.) This is currently not possible for other E-commerce companies to imitate and follow.
In addition, E-commerce companies are actively exploring the development of the new Blue Ocean solution through big data applications. In the below it can be seen the structure of IIOT. Blue Ocean Data Solutions specialize in Industrial Internet of Things especially capturing real time data from machine and various measuring equipment.
Those process parameters which are crucial for process stability may include temperature, pressure, mold temperature, process cycle time, machine down time, machine up time, etc. This enable process engineers to have better focus on required process optimization. (Blue Ocean Data Solutions 2018.) At present, the three major E- commerce companies Alibaba, Jing Dong and Suning have successively make attempts.
Plus, the "Ali Small Loan" model is relatively successful, and the Jing Dong model has gradually become effective. In 2012, Jing Dong launched a “supply chain financial service”
through cooperation with the Bank of China. The supplier submitted a financing
application to Jing Dong with its orders and warehousing orders. After approval, it was submitted to the bank, then the bank gave the loan. According to reports, this service can help Jing Dong suppliers to significantly shorten the account period. The return on capital has increased from about 60% to 226% (Chinawuliu 2012; translated from Chinese by the author).
Figure 9: Blue ocean industrial internet of things (IIOT) (Chinawuliu 2012)
The first challenge is how the cloud computing prevent excessive concentration of superior resources. At present, the development of the E-commerce industry is more focus on concentrated resources due to technical, financial strength, customer accumulation, government support and other reasons. Alibaba is the first echelon,
Jingdong Mall, Vipshop, Suning Tesco as the second echelon. The Jumeiyou, No. 1 shop, Dangdang Mall are the third echelon. As far as the data scale is concerned, the overall concentration is still relatively high. The emergence of big data will, to a certain extent, give the start-up enterprises an opportunity to accelerate development, but the premise is that there is preliminary data accumulation and certain technical and financial strength.
Second, the level of data security needs to be improved. A lot of fragmented information such as the user's shopping habits, web browsing history, social friend information, home address, and contact number can be combined to obtain a part of the user's private information. The network behavior and privacy information of consumers in the era of big data will be collected in large quantities. It will have extremely severe consequences if data is leaked or stolen. E-commerce companies will “learn more about yourself than you”
to tap potential business value through data analysis. At present, many E-commerce companies have a large amount of user privacy data. How to analyze and how to use them is determined by the company itself. The security of big data must be considered.
Third, the calculation speed and computing power need to be further improved. Cloud computing has been pushed out in large areas. The technology is mature and computing power is greatly improved, but it still cannot meet the calculation requirements of big data.
At the same time, cloud computing is relatively secure. The cloud can provide a more professional, efficient and secure data storage environment. The security of traditional databases is greatly improved compared to a single mode. From another perspective, cloud computing also needs to be supported by strong economic and technical
capabilities. Its system construction costs are high. The cost of maintenance and upgrades is high in the future. E-commerce enterprises must connect cloud computing and big data due to their own needs and strengthen computing power and computing speed to enhance their economic benefits.
Fourth, there is a lack of talents related to big data. There are no corresponding graduates in colleges and universities for big data design statistics, mathematical analysis,
computers, data structures, databases, business information, data analysis in China. It is also difficult to stay in the school environment even if you open this major in university.
Training it into a talent that can be directly commercialized requires a long process of experience accumulation. China's current big data talent gap is huge. The reserve of data experts should be strengthened to enable the industry to maintain rapid development.
4.4 The Opportunity
Cloud computing can enhance the security of E-commerce applications. Applying cloud computing to enterprises, the data can be stored in the cloud. And it will provide
professional, efficient, and secure data storage on cloud computing services. Companies no longer have to worry about data loss due to various security issues. As a result, cloud computing can provide enterprises with a reliable and secure data storage center.
Cloud computing can improve the flexibility and professionalism of enterprise E-commerce applications. Cloud computing can provide enterprises with economical and reliable E- commerce system customization services. SaaS is a type of service provided by cloud computing, which provides software as an online service. Electronic outsourcing based on cloud computing technology is one of the important applications of enterprise application E-commerce services. The use of cloud computing by enterprises when using network architecture and applications can make it more convenient.
Cloud computing can achieve data processing capabilities that are difficult to achieve in a common computing environment. Through a certain scheduling strategy, cloud computing can provide users with superior computing power by uniting tens of thousands or even
millions of ordinary computers enabling users to complete tasks that are difficult to accomplish with a single computer. The cloud computing model will invoke the numerous computing resources in the cloud to provide powerful computing power as needed when submitting a computing request in the cloud. In the cloud computing model, enterprises no longer get the information they need from their own computers, not from a designated server, but through various devices (such as mobile terminals) on the Internet.
Cloud computing can create huge profits for E-commerce company. A large number of computers and network equipment must be equipped for enterprises to build E-commerce systems. It is worth noting that enterprises must regularly replace computers and network equipment in order to meet more and more business needs. The cost of establishing an E-commerce system is relatively high. Higher costs are required in the later stages of development and maintenance. It is difficult for SMEs with relatively limited capital. It is also difficult to match the requirements of fast-growing network services and business applications. The application of cloud computing in E-commerce can reduce the cost of establishing an enterprise E-commerce system. Enterprises continue to purchase
expensive hardware equipment, but they also have to pay high maintenance fees through cloud computing. This is mainly because cloud computing can provide IT infrastructure only the devices in the cloud need to be rented. It can be seen that cloud computing can provide good economic benefits for the application of enterprise E-commerce.
4.5 The Case
4.5.1 Tencent Company Profile
Tencent’s headquartered is in Shenzhen, China, founded in 1998. Tencent is an internet- based technology and cultural enterprise. The mission is to “improve the quality of life through internet value-added services” guided by its “user oriented” business philosophy.
Tencent achieves its mission via the delivery of integrated internet solutions to over 1 billion netizens. (Tencent 2019.) Main products of Tencent Holdings Limited are shown in Figure 10.
The company’s architecture is divided into six parts. Corporate Development Business Group (CDG) is for the company’s new business incubation and professional support platform, which responsible for the expansion of important areas including finance, payment and advertising providing professional support for the company’s major
businesses in strategy, investment and public relations markets. Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG) are responsible for the operation and development of the company’s
interactive entertainment business creating diversified, high-quality interactive
entertainment content products such as games, literature, animation, film and television.
Technical Engineering Group is responsible for providing technical and operational platform support for the company and its business groups. Technical engineering business group (TEG) is for providing technical and operational platform support for the company and various business groups, responsible for R&D management and data center construction and operation providing customers with a full range of customer service.
Platform and Content Business Group (PCG) is responsible for the company's Internet platform and content culture ecological integration development, integration of QQ, QQ space and other social platforms, and application treasure, browser and other traffic platforms, as well as news, video, sports, live, animation, film and other content services, promote IP Cross-platform, multi-modal development, creating a massive quality digital content experience for more users. WeChat Group (WXG) is responsible for the
development of WeChat basic platform, WeChat open platform, WeChat payment expansion, O2O and other WeChat extension services, including mailbox, enterprise WeChat and other product development and operation. The Cloud and Smart Industry Group (CSIG) is responsible for advancing the company's cloud and industry Internet strategy, relying on cloud, AI and other technological innovations to create smart industry upgrades and exploring innovative interactions between users and industries, and helping retail, healthcare, education, transportation, etc. (Tencent 2019.)
Figure 10: Main products of the Tencent Holdings Limited (Zhou 2017)
Through all those Tencent main business the reader can get familiar with the applications of Tencent. The main idea to introduce those applications is to explain the Tencent Cloud how to works. Basically, any user of Tencent application can access to Cloud centralized the information that can be any of Tencent applications. The user upload photos to the owed cloud by QQ, music by QQ music, movies by Tencent Video then all those things can control at the same time in the Tencent Cloud. Furthermore, the Cloud can manage sources very flexible. On Tencent Cloud, the holder can quickly increase or decrease the number of cloud servers in a matter of minutes to meet the fast-changing business needs of customers. The client's server size can be automatically expanded and reduced as needed with the relevant settings. Tencent Cloud offers a variety of instance types, operating systems and software packages for customer to choose from. The CPU, memory, hard disk and bandwidth in each instance can also be flexibly adjusted. The configuration is flexible.
Tencent Cloud provides 99.95% service availability and 99.999999% cloud hard drive data reliability. Customers can use the Tencent Cloud Console, API or CLI to fully control the server instance and view it at any time and configuration resources. The private network function provides client with a logically isolated network on Tencent Cloud.
Network Access Control (ACL) can control incoming and outgoing traffic at the subnet level. Flexible configuration of security group policies allows customer to access the network at the instance level. Traffic is filtered for security. (Tencent 2019.)
5 SECURITY ISSUES FACING CLOUD COMPUTING DEVELOPMENT 5.1 Cloud Computing Security Issues
The United States Gartner believes that cloud computing mainly faces the following seven types of security issues (Gartner 2012):
1) Privileged user access risk, privileged users managing data may bypass the
supervision of internal procedures, thereby posing a security risk to sensitive data from outside the enterprise (Gartner 2012);
2) The compliance with the law is due to the fact that the data is handed over to the service provider for supervision. If it refuses to be supervised and audited, it is ultimately the customer's own responsibility for the security and integrity of their own data (Gartner 2012);
3) The data storage location is uncertain. Because cloud computing adopts virtualization technology and distributed storage, it is impossible to know where the data is hosted.
Some permissions that the cloud provider may have may cause hidden dangers to data security (Gartner 2012);
4) Risk of data separation. Since multi-user data is stored together in a shared cloud environment, it is necessary to ensure isolation between data. Although encryption is an effective method, it may affect the availability of data (Gartner 2012);
5) Data recovery, in the event of a disaster, the provider's complete recovery of data and services will also affect the security of the data (Gartner 2012);
6) Investigation support risks, because multi-user log files and data may be stored together, or may be scattered in the changing host and data center, so it is unlikely to investigate inappropriate or illegal activities in the cloud computing environment (Gartner 2012);
7) Long-term availability risk, when the service provider goes bankrupt or is acquired, how to ensure that the data is still available is also a prominent security issue (Gartner 2012).
5.2 Cloud Computing Security Standards Organization
A number of specialized organizations have been set up to conduct research on cloud security standards in order to reduce duplication of investment, enhance interoperability and security, and better guide cloud computing security research in response to the security issues of cloud computing.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA 2019) is a non-profit organization announced at the RSA conference in 2009. Its mission is to help the industry communicate more effectively in terms of security practices and security standards, and to form consistent specifications and standards. Cloud applications are more secure. The Cloud Security Alliance identified 15 focus areas for cloud computing security, made specific recommendations for each area, and selected a number of more important areas to set standards. At present, the Cloud Security Alliance has completed research reports such as “Severe Threats to Cloud Computing”, “Cloud Control Matrix”, and “Security Guidelines for Key Fields of Cloud Computing”. These reports have become important guidance documents in the field of cloud computing security. Computational safety industry norms have important
implications (Feng & Zhang 2011, 71-83).
In order to advance the research work on cloud computing standards, ITU-TSG17 (ITU 2019) established the Cloud Computing Focus Study Group. Cloud computing security, as an important research topic in cloud computing standards, will be carried out
simultaneously in the ITU-TSG17 Cloud Computing Focus Study Group and SG17Q8.
OASIS established the Cloud Identity Technology Committee on May 19, 2010 (Identity in the Cloud Technical Committee, IDCloud), designed to address the serious security challenges posed by identity management in cloud computing (OASIS 2019a). IDCloud is responsible for developing an open standards framework for identity deployment,
configuration, and management in a cloud computing environment, and is committed to working with cloud and other standards organizations such as Cloud Security and ITU in cloud security and identity management (OASIS 2019b).
5.3 Typical Cloud Computing Security Architecture 5.3.1 CSA's Cloud Computing Security Architecture
Due to the abstraction of cloud computing infrastructure, the lack of visualization and the ability to integrate a variety of common security controls, in the cloud computing
environment, especially the network layer cannot deploy the same security control strategy. In response to this problem, CSA proposes a cloud computing security architecture from the perspective of cloud service model (CSA 2019). The security
architecture describes the hierarchy of three basic cloud services and their dependencies and implements the cloud service model to security control and scale. The mapping is shown in Figure 1. The key feature of this security architecture is that the lower the level of the supplier, the more security and management responsibilities the cloud service user has to undertake (Cloud Security Alliance 2011).
In the SaaS environment, because it is at the top of the cloud service model, the supplier assumes the most security responsibility, and the service level, privacy, compliance, security control and its scope are clearly defined in the service contract; in IaaS, due to At the lowest level of the cloud service model, the provider mainly provides security for the low-level infrastructure and abstraction layer. In addition, other security responsibilities are mainly borne by the customer; PaaS resides between SaaS and IaaS, and the provider is mainly the platform itself. It is the responsibility of the customer to provide security, the security of the applications on the platform and how to develop these applications securely.
5.3.2. Trusted Cloud Architecture
VMWare, Intel, and EMC collaborated to propose a trusted cloud architecture. Secure with Intel's TXT Trusted Execution Technology on the infrastructure build a physical trust root for the physical infrastructure, and verify the hardware configuration, BIOS integrity (IEEExplore 2014), hypervisor integrity, and integrity of the virtual machine system in the boot order from the root of trust to achieve trusted boot of the platform. After booting a successful platform, it uses VMWare's virtual isolation technology to secure the virtual environment to protect the security zone of the data center and the virtual machine from viruses and malware.
RSA Envision collects security data from the hardware and virtual layers and performs Unified analysis and management. Build a trusted cloud computing environment through trusted booting of the platform, security protection at the virtual layer, and unified
management of security events.
Figure 10: CSA Model (Thisiswhatgoodlookslike 2019) 5.3.2 Other Cloud Security Frameworks
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA 2019) proposes a cloud computing information security framework for security issues in cloud computing
environments.
Based on its enterprise information security framework, IBM proposes a cloud computing security framework from the aspects of user authentication and authorization, process management, multi-level access control, data isolation and protection, network and storage isolation, and physical security. Cisco proposes a cloud data center security framework that describes threat models for cloud data centers and measures to reduce security risks, emphasizing the importance of implementing appropriate measures at each level of the architecture.
5.4 Cloud Computing Security Key Technologies 5.4.1 Identity Management and Access Control
In a multi-tenant shared cloud computing environment, how to implement user identity management and access control to ensure data isolation and secure access between different users is one of the key technologies for cloud computing security. Some of combines federated identity management with identity-based layered encryption to propose an identity authentication method that makes key distribution and mutual authentication easier (Liang, Ming & Zhao 2009,167-177).
In order to enhance interoperability between multiple domains and simplify identity management under the premise of protecting user privacy, Elisa Bertino et al. conducted research based on high-level identity authentication strategy, zero-knowledge proof protocol, and semantic matching (Bertino, Paci & Ferrini 2012, 32).
5.4.2 Security Audit
In a cloud computing environment, users lose control of their own data and calculations, so they need to audit the behavior of users and providers to ensure the correct execution of security policies and to maintain the organization's own compliance.
The goal of the Cloud Audit project is to provide the foundation for ensuring the trust and transparency of private and public clouds (Ko, Jagadpramana & Mowbray 2012, 38).
Chen and Wang et al. studied the audit-as-a-service in cloud computing and proposed a CSIRO prototype system to audit the services deployed in the cloud computing
environment (Chen, C & Wang 2010, 91-98).
5.4.3 Virtualization Security
Cloud computing uses virtualization technology to implement dynamic management and deployment of physical resources, providing an isolated computing environment for multiple users. Virtual machine security, virtual network security, and Hypervisor security issues directly impact the security of the cloud computing platform.
Therefore, virtualization security is critical to ensuring the security of cloud computing environments. IBM proposed a secure Hypervisor architecture (sHype 2019), sHype, which implements mandatory sharing of access to the resources of virtual machines and the flow of information between virtual machines to ensure resource sharing.
5.4.4 Data Protection
Ensuring the confidentiality, availability, integrity, and non-repudiation of data is a key issue for cloud computing security. Centry proposed a complete homomorphic encryption mechanism (Centry 2009, 87). Someone uses an encryption method based on ring and group signatures to implement anonymous storage of user data (Jensen, Schage &
Schwenk 2010, 540-541). Someone else proposes to provide a secure execution domain in a cloud environment through the tamper-proof capability of the cryptographic
coprocessor, physically and logically preventing unauthorized access to data (Itani, Kaussi
& Chehab 2009, 711-716).
This is another option, an anonymous data search engine is proposed, which enables the two parties to search each other's data and obtain the information they need, while ensuring that the content of the search query is not known by the other party (Raykova, Vo, Bellovin & Malkin 2009, 115-126). Roy et al. integrated centralized information flow control and differential privacy protection into the data generation and computation phase of the cloud, and proposed a privacy protection system (Roy, Ramadan, Setty, Kilzer, Shmatikov & Witchel 2010, 297-312).
5.4.5 Trusted Cloud Computing
Integrating trusted computing with cloud computing and building a trusted cloud security architecture is a hot topic in cloud computing security research. In view of the current inability of cloud computing terminals to verify the confidentiality and integrity of data and computing, there is a Trusted Cloud Computing Platform Architecture (TCCP 2019), Based on the TCCP platform, IaaS providers can Provides a closed sandbox execution environment to the user to ensure the confidentiality of the guest virtual machine, while TCCP also allows the user to verify the service security of the IaaS provider before starting the virtual machine. S. Berger et al. implemented TPM virtualization to provide trusted computing services for virtual environments and enhanced security of virtual machine instances from the cloud infrastructure level (Santos, Gummadi & Rodrigues 2010, 121).
By modifying the guest virtual machine, TPM strengthens the isolation between virtual machines and enhances the confidentiality of user data on the virtual machine, which is based on the combination of virtualization technology and trusted computing technology, in order to guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of the machine data of the cloud provider (Kong 2010, 936-941).
6 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH AND DATA ANALYSIS
The empirical research and data analysis will be discussed in this chapter. The data collection formulation of the questionnaire and the analysis also will be addressed. For every figure there will be a discussion for the outcomes of each questions.
6.1 Data Collection
As discussed in the introduction, the thesis uses primary and secondary data. It also uses qualitative and quantitative methods. The primary data was taken from a questionnaire. A questionnaire was carried out with E-commerce company’s employee and company’s manager in China. This was to ascertain their perceptions toward any circumstance in the industry of cloud computing in China.
The data collection from the questionnaire started on 17 April 2019 and closed on 30 April 2019. There were 110 respondents of which ninety-one were valid. The questionnaire was available only in English and shared on various social media pages (Wei Bo, WeChat, QQ).
The questionnaire was designed in early April, using Google forms. It was opened and shared on social media on 17 April and closed on 30 April. The data were analyzed at the end of April going to the beginning of March.
6.2 Formulation of the Questionnaire
The questionnaire was created by using Google Forms. The full and final questionnaire is in the appendices. When creating and sharing the questionnaire, it was important to mention that respondents must live in China and work in E-commerce company.
To analyze the different parts of cloud computing, it was important to receive more information: occupation, what is the extent about concerning with cloud computing, the personal thoughts of cloud computing. Participants were asked to choose from who worked in E-commerce companies for years.
6.3 Analysis of Questionnaire
This section provides an analysis of the questionnaire: demographics, preferences to user’s occupation and what is extent the people know cloud computing. Then, how they would react to use cloud computing in the E-commerce company.
Figure 11: Occupation of participants
The vast majority of the people that answered the questionnaire were either from developer or IT operation and maintenance personnel. Others are IT decision maker, sales staff and college students (trainees).
Figure 12: What is your opinion on cloud computing 21%
14%
10%
18%
34%
3%
Occupation
Developer
IT operation and maintenance personnel IT decision maker
Sales staff (business sales College students
other
74%
25%
1%
What do you think about cloud computing?
Inevitable trend Epoch-making revolution Just a girl
Figure 13: Are you concerned about cloud computing
Nearly 75 per cent participants in the questionnaire concern the development of cloud computing as the inevitable trend. And nearly 81 percent was already deployed cloud computing. It shows that as an important infrastructure of the entire information economy, cloud computing has reshaped the working mode of ICT in the whole industry. Everyone in IT company could related to cloud computing.
75%
18%
7%
Are you concerned about cloud computing?
Very concerned general Not concerned
33%
25% 18%
24%
What do you think cloud computing is
a calculation method a way of thinking a service An IT technology
