Migration to the public cloud

Abstract

Along with the development of cloud computing technology, website owners begin to consider migrating their website from private in-house server to public cloud servers. In this paper, we use a principal-agent model to analyze the underlying economic trade-offs of such migration and then extend it into a dynamic environment. Our results indicate that the trade-off between market information precision and rent extraction affects the decision choice between private server and public cloud in the short run; in the long run, the rent extraction effect diminishes and the demand for public cloud increases. In a long run equilibrium, private servers exist but are constrained to a comparatively low level.