Factors Influencing the Adoption of Enterprise Cloud Computing

Abstract

As cloud computing becomes more common, there is growing need for studies to consider various factors that either facilitate or hinder its adoption in an effort to reduce the hesitation some firms have shown about adopting innovative systems and thus establishing cloud computing at a company-wide level. We used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for analysis and employed the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework, which takes the enterprise perspective, as the second hierarchy. All of the groups regarded new business opportunities as the most important facilitating factor, indicating that they focused more on how they could use cloud computing after adopting it than on the technology itself. The most important hindering factor was information protection weaknesses. Firms that adopt innovative technologies strictly for cost-saving purposes may face serious difficulties. Consistent with this argument, this study's results indicate that cost saving has no substantial impact on an enterprise's decision to adopt cloud computing. A number of participants mentioned that the cost of adopting cloud computing was not an important factor.