Requirements definition for a holistic approach of cloud computing governance

With the appearance of virtualization, the spread of internet, the development of broadband networks, and also the advent of externalization and application rental; cloud computing (CC) has emerged as being the next generation of distributed computing paradigm. Based on 'pay-for-what-you-use' model, CC offers significant benefits including costs reduction, on demand provisioning, rapid elasticity, resources pooling, etc. But despite all its potential gains, the model also introduces many challenges from which the major concern that hampers its adoption is the lack of an integrated approach for CC governance. With regard to this matter, the main contributions of this paper is first, to analyze the existing standards and research works considering different aspects of IT governance; and second, to identify, analyze, and organize the main CC governance requirements that constitute the cornerstone for the development of an integrated approach for CC governance. © 2015 IEEE.