An empirical investigation of factors affecting cloud computing adoption among SMEs in the North East of England

Abstract

The growing adoption of cloud computing is changing the way business information systems are developed, scaled up, maintained and paid for. This not only applies to large organisations, but also increasingly to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). In particular, cloud computing promises to improve the reliability and scalability of IT systems, which allows SMEs to focus their limited resources on their core business and strategy. In the SME context, technology adoption and usage decisions are influenced by many factors. Despite the extensive literature, there is still limited research related to the factors which impact on SMEs' adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) innovations. By adopting the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) Model, this research project attempts to conceptualise cloud computing adoption and to enhance understanding of the range of factors affecting cloud computing adoption decision making in SMEs. This work utilises both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to meet the research objectives. This study proposes a conceptual framework of SMEs' adoption of cloud computing. Before carrying out a survey to test this model, a preliminary empirical study involving 15 SMEs in the North east of England was conducted in order to specify the factors that can be included within the developed conceptual framework. Our pilot study findings were fed into the second stage of our empirical study involving 184 SMEs in the North East of England. Among the factors examined, relative advantage, uncertainty, innovativeness, and external computing support were found to have significant influence on whether SMEs adopted cloud computing. These findings have important implications and great value to the research community, managers and ICT providers, in terms of formulating better strategies for cloud computing adoption. The research model in this study can improve their understanding of why some SMEs choose to adopt cloud computing services, while seemingly similar ones facing similar market conditions do not