From Affordances to Business Value – How Can Organizations Use Fog Computing to Create Business Value?

Abstract

Fog computing (FC) is an uprising technology emerging to solve problems arising from the usage of cloud computing (CC) in handling the large volume of data created by an increasing amount of intelligent edge devices in a timely manner. However, there are still only a few real-world implementations of FC, and the discussion remains mainly in academia. Research currently falls short in guiding organizations in elaborating on FC usage for value creation, as it mainly neglects a discussion on this technologies business values. Therefore, this work set out to investigate how fog computing creates or enhances business values for an organization. By conducting a literature review comprising 58 publications and taking an affordance theoretical point of view in subsequent thematic analysis (TA), I derive 61 FC affordances (in four top-level themes), 12 service types (in three top-level themes), and 32 business values (in four top-level themes). Based thereon, eight business value creation sets (BVCSs) have been created, showcasing how affordances can aid services to achieve business values for organizations. To the best of my knowledge, this work is the first of its kind for identifying the potential value of FC, building a stepping stone for research and practice.