Open Access

Martin Bremer, Tim Walter, Nikita Fjodorovs, Katharina Schmid

• The COVID-19 pandemic has shown companies that their on-premise infrastructures often reach their limits with a large number of remote accesses. The transition to cloud-based solutions could represent a more efficient alternative. However, many German companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), are still hesitant to take this big step of transferring applications to the cloud. For this reason, this paper examines the question of whether existing migration approaches in the analysis phase fit the specific requirements of SMEs. Using a literature review methodology, we first identify and analyze determinant factors for cloud adoption in SMEs. On this basis, we analyze existing methods in the analysis phase for migrations from on-premise software to cloud solutions. We investigate whether these factors are considered in the analysis phase of the approaches and conclude their suitability for SMEs. Of the migration approaches we examined, none included all the factors we identified as relevant to SMEs. Fewer have considered all factors fully and in detail. We present the results of the literature search process in tabular form and conclude this paper with a discussion and synthesis of the literature as well as an outlook on further research fields.