Assessing the sustainability of cloud computing service providers for Industry 4.0: a state-of-the-art analytical approach
针对现有方法权重主观、计算复杂且忽视可持续性的问题，提出基于数据包络分析的综合方法，用真实数据验证，帮助从业者评估工业4.0云服务提供商的可持续性。
While interests in Industry 4.0 technologies such as cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are growing, an ongoing challenge is to properly evaluate the performance of the providers of such technologies. Methods have been developed and applied to assess the efficiency of cloud service providers (CSPs) for Industry 4.0. However, most existing methods suffer from such shortcomings as subjective weights and computing complexity, rendering it difficult to succinctly differentiate the performance of CSPs in a competitive market. Besides, the literature has not taken into account many different types of data such as ratios, integers, and undesirable factors that can affect the performance of CSPs. Most importantly, most existing studies do not consider the sustainability of CSPs in evaluating their performance. To address the above issues, we present a comprehensive analytical method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to gauge the sustainability of CSPs for Industry 4.0. Validating the usefulness of our method using a real-life dataset, we provide not only a viable means with sound academic underpinning but also significant managerial insights for practitioners to assess the sustainability of CSPs for Industry 4.0.