Assessing the reported risk factors by the top cloud computing providers

Abstract

The literature has widely investigated the risks from the perspective of the companies adopting new and disruptive technologies. However, less attention has been paid from the side of the providers of such technologies. This paper aims to address this gap by assessing and initiating a discussion on the reported risk factors in the annual reports of five of the considered top providers of cloud computing services: Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Alibaba, characterized by their avant-garde or disruptive technologies, their dependence on the internet and technological infrastructure, and their operation on a global scale. As main contributions, this research offers from the viewpoint of these companies a classification of the intrinsic risk factors related to their specific nature, grouped by subjects, along with the potential derived negative impacts on their businesses, and critically discusses some positive aspects and some potentially missing factors to be further addressed. Through this paper, we prepare the avenue for ongoing research, including more companies and further assessment methods and criteria to further expand and enrich the findings.