Abstract
In the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the need to adopt cloud computing (CC) applications by education institutions, in general, and higher education (HE) institutions, in particular, has especially increased to engage students in an online mode and remotely carrying out research. The adoption of CC across various sectors, including HE, has been picking momentum in the developing countries in the last few years. In the Indian context, the CC adaptation in the HE sector (HES) remains a less thoroughly explored sector, and no comprehensive study is reported in the literature. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to overcome this research vacuum and examine the factors that impact the CC adoption (CCA) by HE institutions (HEIs) in India. The scope of the study is limited to public universities (PUs) in India. There are, in total, 465 Indian PUs and among these 304 PUs, (i.e., 65% PUs) are surveyed using questionnaire-based research. The study has put forth a novel integrated technology adoption framework consisting of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE), and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) in the context of the HES. This integrated TAM-TOE-DOI framework is utilized in the study to analyze eleven hypotheses concerning factors of CCA that have been tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The findings reveal that competitive advantage (CA), technology compatibility (TC), technology readiness (TR), senior leadership support, security concerns, government support, and vendor support are the significant contributing factors of CCA by Indian PUs. The study contends that whereas the rest of the factors positively affect the PUs’ intention towards CCA, security concerns are a significant reason for the reluctance of these universities against adopting CC. The findings demonstrated the application of an integrated TAM-TOE-DOI framework to assess determining factors of CCA in Indian PUs. Further, the study has given useful insights into the successful CCA by Indian PUs, which will facilitate eLearning and remote working during COVID-19 or similar outbreak.
Highlights
The world is facing the biggest challenge of the 21st century called the COVID-19 pandemic, influencing almost every walk of human life, including the education of more than 1700 million students worldwide [1]
6.1 Sample Description The sample description indicating designations of key IT professionals of the participating universities, profile of the universities selected for the study, and their usage of cloud computing (CC) service and deployment models is presented in Tab. 2
The findings reveal that the technological context and environmental context impact the intention of public universities (PUs) to adopt CC
Summary
The world is facing the biggest challenge of the 21st century called the COVID-19 pandemic, influencing almost every walk of human life, including the education of more than 1700 million students worldwide [1]. Many countries have imposed restrictions or even lockdown This COVID-19 pandemic situation is making online education a popular and perhaps the only choice for higher education (HE) institutions [2–4]. CC adoption (CCA) has transformed the global business information technology into a new paradigm of online data storage, management, and processing instead of using traditional brick and mortar-based servers. This new paradigm offers easy online access to massive computing power [6]. Challenges like the availability of computing resources, physical facilities, and adequacy of skilled personnel negatively affect technology adoption by the education sector, especially in developing countries [14]
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