Cloud Advisor Bot: Towards a Chatbot to Enable Efficient Cloud Assessments

Increased consciousness of cloud computing capabilities leads to greater adoption of the cloud. For many businesses, cloud computing represents an attractive cost-saving option for the establishment and maintenance of IT resources. Decision-makers are often confronted with multi-criteria decision issues regarding cloud service and deployment model selection and do not have the required technological and business-related background. This work aimed at developing a conversational decisions advisor in the form of the Cloud Advisor Bot to support complex assessment of cloud needs. The literature review revealed a gap in this domain as there is no pre-existing research in the area of chatbots that support the cloud assessment process. Based on the literature reviews as well as further research, it was investigated which elements needed to be developed in order to implement a prototype of the Cloud Advisor Bot. To achieve this, design science research was applied to iteratively develop the solution. The evaluation has shown that the prototype of the Cloud Advisor Bot can be successfully used in order to conduct an assessment regarding a possible cloud deployment scenario. The paper also proposes further developments in order to improve the solution and make it viable for the future