Cloud computing research: A review of research themes, frameworks, methods and future research directions

This paper presents a meta-analysis of cloud computing research in information systems with the aim of taking stock of literature and their associated research frameworks, research methodology, geographical distribution, level of analysis as well as trends of these studies over the period of 7 years. A total of 285 articles from 67 peer review journals from year 2009 to 2015 were used in the analysis. The findings indicate that extant cloud computing literature tends to skew towards the technological dimension to the detriment of other under researched dimensions such as business, conceptualization and application domain. Whilst there has been a constant increase in cloud computing studies over the last seven years, a significant number of these studies have not been underpinned by theoretical frameworks and models. Also, majority of cloud computing studies utilized experiment and simulation as methods of enquiry as compared to the qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodologies. This study contributes to cloud computing research by providing holistic insights into trends on themes, methodology, research framework, geographical focus and future research directions.