Factors influencing the Cloud Computing adoption in Higher Education Institutions of Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Cloud Computing is one of the most important trend and newest area in the field of information technology in which resources (e.g. CPU and storage) can be leased and released by customers through the Internet in an on-demand basis. The adoption of Cloud Computing in Education and developing countries is real an opportunity. Although Cloud computing has gained popularity in Pakistan especially in education and industry, but its impact in Pakistan is still unexplored especially in Higher Education Department. Already published work investigated in respect of factors influencing on adoption of cloud computing but very few investigated said analysis in developing countries. The Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of Punjab, Pakistan are still not focused to discover cloud adoption factors. In this study, we prepared cloud adoption model for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of Punjab, a survey was carried out from 900 students all over Punjab. The survey was designed based upon literature and after discussion and opinions of academicians. In this paper, 34 hypothesis were developed that affect the cloud computing adoption in HEIs and tested by using powerful statistical analysis tools i.e. SPSS and SmartPLS. Statistical findings shows that 84.44% of students voted in the favor of cloud computing adoption in their colleges, while 99% supported Reduce Cost as most important factor in cloud adoption.