Designing Software as a Service in Cloud Computing Using Quality Function Deployment

Introduction

Cloud computing is one of the technologies that has been widely accepted in IT, and there are some advantages in developing it namely economizing on costs, ease of use, scalability, flexibility and environmental sustainability. Nowadays, along with the development in application of IT in organizations, there is a need for storing an extensive volume of data where the advantage of storing the data outside the organization in cloud services is helps to solve the problem. Using the new technology including cloud services increases efficiency and speed up the execution of tasks; furthermore, the numerous advantages of this technology has aroused people and organizations' interests to use it. Cloud computing intends to provide the requisite computational infrastructures extensively and cheaply with a high-quality level.

Cloud computing provides network services that are easily available, and it offers valuable suggestions for the organizations to enable them to supply their required technology-communication information and infrastructures. Also, it economizes on the costs of execution, resources and brokers. The continuous evolution of technology enables cloud computing to make it possible to make an unexpected progress in terms of security, bandwidth, technological standards and virtualization in the service providing method of IT, and this provides motivation to use cloud computing to a greater extent. One of the services of cloud computing relates to responding, communication and expertise. The businesses require huge amounts of data that have been managed and shared. Therefore, the hardware and software with high efficiency require the need in cloud services responding to be removed (Masiyev et al., 2012). From the organization standpoint, the cloud computations provide some services to meet the needs of consumer and business in a simple way and provide an unlimited scale and a different service quality to advance innovation and immediate decision making (Rai, et al., 2013). Providing the services in cloud computing are divided into 3 groups: PAAS, IAAS, SAAS. SAAS has been proposed as a solution for the IT managers to reduce the organizational costs (Benlian & Hess, 2011).

SAAS is a service that is provided for the customers along with the cloud infrastructure, and it has been provided with some features such as dynamism in the rate of using the resources, high speed in providing services, security and high extensibility. Software as a (SAAS) service allows the users to connect and use the application programs based on cloud in internet virtual space. Some of the advantages of SAAS are as follows: economizing in time and costs, focusing the technology budgets on competitive advantages, immediate access to latest innovations. The numerous capabilities of the software as a service in different aspects and the favorable reception it has received have caused SAAS to be used in different and numerous fields such as web-based education and learning, service and production, auditing and finance, organizational and administrative activities etc. Using SAAS makes the execution of tasks highly effective and obtains high customer satisfaction.

The organizations and customers are highly interested to use these services because of the popularity and spread of the cloud services; therefore, designing a model to provide these services in a desirable way, the organizations will enable the organizations to gain a competitive advantage in providing the services according to the customers' needs. In the present research, a QFD model is designed and provided in order to provide the services appropriate to the customer needs. In the present study, the customer demands of the mentioned service are identified and a service appropriate to the customer needs is designed. The advantage of the proposed method is that it pays attention to the provider's perspective and the competitive environment in addition to the customer's perspective, and it can provide the organization with the best strategy of the product. QFD is a powerful tool to improve the quality and design, development of the product and to create a customer–oriented quality system; therefore, using this method about the cloud services can be considered an efficient and practical method.

In the first section of the present research, the importance of this subject has been pointed out. In the second section, the previous literature was examined. In the third section, the main approach including the method and proposed model was stated. In the fourth section, the obtained results were analyzed, and finally the results of the present research and the suggestions according to the results were stated to be used in future research.