An Exploration of Customer-Centric Cloud Service Design

Cloud computing applications and services go hand in hand, yet there is no clear mechanism for ensuring that the cloud applications are designed from a customer’s perspective. This paper describes the initial design and development of a predictive analytics cloud service application, which uses historic customer data to predict the existing customers that are most likely to churn. Service blueprinting, a service innovation method, was being used as the underlying design model for developing an initial shared understanding of the required service. The Design Science paradigm can focus on the development of the IT artifact, but it can also develop an Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) as a research outcome. This paper considers service blueprinting as kernel theory or underpinning mechanism for a Cloud Service Design Theory (CSDT), which will enable developers to prescribe designs of customer centric cloud based service applications. Using the design science paradigm an extended cloud service design theory is proposed, as an outcome of the ongoing development of this analytics platform.

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