Data visibility and trust enhancement of enterprise customers in cloud computing services

This Cloud computing is a pervasive technology and has been a platform in IT for several years. Cloud service providers (CSP) have developed and offered different service platforms to accommodate different needs of enterprise subscribers. However, there still exists the situation of enterprise customers' hesitation and reluctance to deploy their core applications using cloud service platforms. Our survey results show that security is the perceived major concern of existing and prospective enterprise customers of cloud services. The research investigates the trust between enterprise customers and cloud service provider with regards to the perceived security of cloud services. Enterprise customers expected to be reassured of cloud service security in a more visible way from cloud service provider. The perception of data security in cloud computing platform can be enhanced by data visibility. The term data visibility has been widely used in the IT industry especially from ICT product and solution vendors. However, there is no common practice guideline or standard in industry. This paper defines the characteristic and elements of data visibility and proposes a model and architecture as best practice reference for the industry. We expect that the enhancement of data visibility can earn the trust of enterprise customers in adopting public cloud services.