Development of a Cloud Solution for SMEs in the Irish Construction Industry

Abstract

There is a strong emerging trend within the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector for replacing traditional packaged desktop applications with Web based, outsourced products and services. The drive for this innovative solution is its contribution to enabling software to be developed, delivered and consumed in discrete chunks (known as services) liberating the users from traditional computing and providing services accessible across a range of devices and appliances. The objective of this paper is to report on the progress towards defining this Web based service, commonly known as ‘Cloud computing’, for Small to Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) in the Irish construction industry. The authors will present the results of a Construction IT Alliance (CITA) Enterprise Innovation Network (EIN) marketplace survey that combined vendor and consumer attitudes. This paper will also act as recommendation for the future development of a re-engineered software solution that will utilise the benefits of Web services in the Irish construction industry. Use of ICT Up-take: identifying the overall business strategy of the respondents and their attitudes towards purchasing software and their use of ICT in the next three years. The purpose behind investigating this strategy was to establish the market requirement for SMEs. Driving forces: the main attributes associated with attracting construction enterprises to use Cloud computing. The ten most standard types of drivers associated with using Cloud were presented in a ten point ranking scale format in the questionnaires. Perceived Barriers to adoption: the industry’s most common perceived barriers for rejecting the adoption of a centralized heterogeneous network based on OS principles. The ten listed barriers used in the questionnaires were based on secondary data collected from various national and international publications on this topic. Benefits of Cloud computing: questions relating to opinions targeting the perceived benefits of Cloud computing. This question was presented as a likert scale to measure a range of options from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree” in both questionnaires. The results of the perceived benefits could only assist in judging whether this service would be a success for SMEs in the Irish construction industry.