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In addition to the rapid development of global information and communications technology (ICT) and the Internet, recent rapid growth in cloud computing technology represents another important trend. Individual continuance intention towards information technology is a critical area in which information systems research can be performed. This study aims to develop an integrated model designed to explain and predict an individual’s continuance intention towards personal cloud services based on the concepts of technology readiness (TR) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2), moderated by gender, age, and experience of personal cloud services. The key results of the partial least square test largely support the proposed model’s validity and the significant impact of effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, price value, habit, and technology readiness on continuance intention towards personal cloud services. In addition to providing symmetric theoretical support with the proposed model and transforming the individual characteristics of TR into UTAUT2, this study could be used to enhance and analyze users’ adoption of personal cloud services and also increase the symmetry of the model’s explanation and prediction. The findings from this research contribute to providing practical implications and academic resources as well as improving our understanding of personal cloud service applications.

In the last few years, network “softwarization” is gaining increasing popularity to achieve dynamicity and flexibility. Cloud computing, as well as the new paradigms of software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), are supporting this evolution. However, the need to move services closer to users to guarantee low latency in the service fruition on one hand, and the trend to support personalization of services on the other, are stimulating the migration of services toward edge nodes (in the so-called “fog computing” fashion). This is the target of the INPUT platform, proposed in the INPUT project to support future Internet personal cloud services in a more scalable and sustainable way, and with innovative added-value capabilities. The INPUT platform enables next-generation cloud applications to go beyond classical service models, and even replaces physical smart devices, usually placed in users’ homes (e.g., set-top-boxes, etc.), with virtual entities, providing them to users “as a Service.” In this paper, we present the INPUT paradigm and discuss a relevant use case—namely, the virtual set-top-box—adopted to prove the feasibility of the softwarized SDN/NFV paradigm jointly with the fog-computing approach for the support of personal cloud services. The INPUT platform is also compared with a legacy approach to evaluate the gain in terms of quality of experience for both static and mobile users.

In order to overcome the cloud service performance limits, the INPUT Project aims to go beyond the typical IaaS-based service models by moving computing and storage capabilities from the datacenters to the edge network, and consequently moving cloud services closer to the end users. This approach, which is compatible with the concept of fog computing, will exploit Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) to support personal cloud services in a more scalable and sustainable way and with innovative added-value capabilities. This paper presents OpenVolcano, the open-source software platform under development in the INPUT Project, which will realize the fog computing paradigm by exploiting in-network programmability capabilities for off-loading, virtualization and monitoring.

Network "softwarization" is gaining increasing popularity to achieve dynamicity and flexibility. Cloud computing, together with the new paradigms of SDN and NFV are supporting this evolution. However, the need to move services closer to users to guarantee low latency in the service fruition on one hand, and the trend to support personalization of services on the other hand, are stimulating a migration of the services toward edge nodes. This is the target of the platform proposed in the INPUT project to support Future Internet personal cloud services in a more scalable and sustainable way. The INPUT platform enables next-generation cloud applications to go beyond classical service models replacing physical smart home devices, with virtual entities, providing them to users "as a Service." In this paper, we discuss the design and open-source implementation of a virtual Set-Top-Box that is compliant to the INPUT platform.