A cloud computing adoption in Indian SMEs: Scale development and validation approach

The purpose of this research article is to identify the critical success criteria/factors that affect the cloud computing adoption and examine structure, reliability and validity of the criteria in the SMEs industry. This study considers nine types of criteria/factors with fifty-one sub-criteria, which have somewhat previously been used, and creates a ranking model that offers decision makers to measure the prior implementation of cloud computing adoption. A questionnaire-based survey research was used to collect data from 110 firms belonging to the SMEs industry in India. In this paper, the data collected was analysed by an integrated approach. Firstly, an Analytic Hierarchy Process approach was applied to find the significant fact of each criterion as the assessable indices of the cloud computing adoption. Secondly, an Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were used to examine structure, reliability and validity of the criteria. The data was tabulated in a Microsoft Excel sheet and then imported in SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20) for analysis. The findings discovered that ‘Security and Privacy’, ‘Organizational Risk’, ‘Sharing and Collaboration’, ‘Confidentiality’, and ‘Integrity’ have a major effect on the adoption of cloud computing. The research was conducted in the SMEs industry in India, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. The findings and recommendations offer cloud computing service providers as well as users with a better understanding of what affects the cloud computing adoption feature, with a relevant understanding of the current scenario. The research aided in the application of the new technology of cloud computing adoption in the SMEs industry in India through the use of a wide range of criteria. The findings also help organizations study their information technology investments when applying cloud computing.     

Organizational agility through outsourcing: Roles of IT alignment,cloud computing and knowledge transfer

This study introduces the concept of outsourcing appropriation based on adaptive structuration theory (AST) to explore how organizations attain IT-dependent organizational agility through outsourcing appropriation. It examines the mediating role of IT alignment and the moderating roles of the adoption of cloud computing and knowledge transfer. The proposed model was tested using survey data from a sample of 170 IT executives. Our results indicate that the consensus of appropriation (COA) and faithfulness of appropriation (FOA) are positively associated with IT-dependent organizational agility, and the relationships are partially mediated by IT alignment. When adoption of cloud computing is high, the positive relationship between IT alignment and IT-dependent organizational agility becomes stronger than when it is low. Interestingly, results also show that the moderating roles of the transfer of explicit knowledge and transfer of tacit knowledge in the relationship between outsourcing appropriation and IT-dependent organizational agility vary significantly. The transfer of explicit knowledge negatively moderates the relationship between COA and agility. The transfer of tacit knowledge positively moderates the relationship between FOA and agility. These findings deepen our understanding of how organizations gain IT-dependent organizational agility in the context of IT outsourcing.     

IT外包采纳决策模型与实证研究

融合交易成本理论和资源基础理论构建IT外包决策分析框架,以中国大陆地区161家IT外包企业作为样本数据进行分析检验.结果表明,IT缺口、IT应用的战略地位和IT外包成本是影响企业采纳IT外包的显著因素;与已有实证研究不同,由信息化发展的迫切需求所产生的相关IT缺口是驱动中国大陆企业采纳IT外包的关键因素.     

Implementation and impacts of IT Service Management in the IT function

In recent years, organizations have made significant IT investments, including digital transformation programs, with the aim of enhancing the quality and delivery of services, and creating greater value for stakeholders. However, deriving value from IT investments and digital transformation necessitates, among other factors, a solid mastery of the IT function. In light of this, IT Service Management (ITSM) has emerged as a crucial and widely implemented approach to managing an organization's IT function, with the goal of achieving both operational and strategic benefits. Yet, despite its wide adoption, this approach has been undertheorized by academics, and there is limited understanding of the impacts that ITSM can generate for organizations as well as the mechanisms through which these impacts are achieved. In order to address this problem, this paper performs a systematic literature review examining research published on ITSM between 2012 and 2021 in order to understand what has occurred rather than what could or should be expected. Based on the findings, the paper advances that ITSM should be considered a Management Control System that includes a variety of control practices to achieve greater performance, transparency, and customer-focus within the IT function. It is also argued that these outcomes in turn increase client satisfaction and business/IT alignment. A model of the organizational impacts of ITSM is developed and ITSM is suggested as a subject for further, richer research into IS controls.     

An empirical study on business analytics affordances enhancing the management of cloud computing data security

The mechanism of business analytics affordances enhancing the management of cloud computing data security is a key antecedent in improving cloud computing security. Based on information value chain theory and IT affordances theory, a research model is built to investigate the underlying mechanism of business analytics affordances enhancing the management of cloud computing data security. The model includes business analytics affordances, decision-making affordances of cloud computing data security, decision-making rationality of cloud computing data security, and the management of cloud computing data security. Simultaneously, the model considers the role of data-driven culture and IT business process integration. It is empirically tested using data collected from 316 enterprises by Partial Least Squares-based structural equation model. Without data-driven culture and IT business process integration, the results suggest that there is a process from business analytics affordances to decision-making affordances of cloud computing data security, decision-making rationality of cloud computing data security, and to the management of cloud computing data security. Moreover, Data-driven culture and IT business process integration have a positive mediation effect on the relationship between business analytics affordances and decision-making affordances of cloud computing data security. The conclusions in this study provide useful references for the enterprise to strengthen the management of cloud computing data security using business analytics.     

Discovering the potential of cloud computing in accelerating the search for curing serious illnesses

Derided, when it emerged in 2007 as a fad, cloud computing has proved to be a viable business model for remotely delivering IT services through the Web (and other media) on a pay-as-you-go basis. The flexibility of this emerging computing service has opened many possibilities for organizations. Drug companies and medical research centers are among those organizations that are likely to benefit from this new IT service model. As well as providing massive cost-savings, cloud computing could offer these organizations the opportunity to greatly enhance the efficiency of their operations. For cloud providers, this is a new field to expand their reach. The aim of this article is to explore this new development and the potential of cloud computing in contributing to the advancement of research in life science and explain why this IT service model (despite many of its problems) could be game-changer for companies engaged in this business.     

An exploratory study to understand the critical factors affecting the decision to adopt cloud computing in Taiwan hospital

The purpose of this study is to investigate the critical factors that will affect the decision to adopt cloud computing technology in developing countries, specifically in Taiwan's hospital industry. This study mainly integrates the TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework and HOT-fit (Human-Organization-Technology fit) model to understand this issue. Information was collected by employing a questionnaire research design to hospital CIOs in Taiwan. The obtained results indicate that the 5 most critical factors are data security, perceived technical competence, cost, top manager support, and complexity. Further, among the proposed four dimensions the most important one is technology followed by human, organizational, and environmental factors. Finally, the results show that significant differences exist in CIO innovativeness, data security, compatibility, top manager support, adequate resource, and perceived industry pressure across different adopting groups. For practitioners, this study identifies key factors for hospitals to make an adoption decision toward cloud computing technology. As for academia, this study can be provided as a useful reference for future studies in this subject field.     

Examining cloud computing adoption intention,pricing mechanism,and deployment model

Cloud computing is a new information technology (IT) paradigm that promises to revolutionize traditional IT delivery through reduced costs, greater elasticity, and ubiquitous access. On the surface, adopting cloud computing requires a firm to address many of the same concerns they face in adopting any enterprise IT. However, cloud technologies also offer new pricing and deployment strategies that are unavailable in traditional enterprise solutions. It is unclear how previous research frameworks of enterprise IT adoption relate to these new adoption strategies. To bridge this gap in the literature, our study uses the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework of innovation diffusion theory to develop a cloud service adoption model that deals with not only adoption intention, but also pricing mechanisms and deployment models. Our research model has been empirically tested using 200 Taiwanese firms. We found that: (1) Cloud adoption is still at its initial stage, since the adoption rates are very low; (2) the perceived benefits, business concerns, and IT capability within the TOE framework are significant determinants of cloud computing adoption, while external pressure is not; (3) firms with greater IT capability tend to choose the pay-as-you-go pricing mechanism; (4) business concern is the most important factor influencing the choice of deployment model, with higher concerns leading to private deployment options.     

国外云计算企业战略并购分析与启示

分析云计算产业发展现状,通过在互联网搜索找到公开报道的2009年到2014年2月间149起国外云计算企业并购交易,分析这些交易的特征、动因及对我国的启示,以期为我国云计算产业的发展提供理论和实践上的借鉴。     

Cloud computing enabled business model innovation

Cloud computing's primary layer of security is its widespread adoption by businesses due to its ability to provide easy, on-demand network access to a large pool of configurable processing resources. Pressure from developed-world governments to keep up with the latest IT trends makes it challenging for colleges around the world to adopt cloud computing in engineering education. Although cloud computing as a concept has become more popular in recent times and quite a few studies have been conducted, the adoption and application level is still very low, particularly in developing countries. This study provides a realistic framework for gauging the sustainability of a company model. While digitalization is widely acknowledged to be crucial, the study's results reveal that the perceived available options for business model innovation depend not only on the value proposition itself but also on the position in the value network. The primary goal of this research is to create a cloud computing service provider business model that is built on circular economy principles and can guarantee the sustainable usage of cloud computing resources.     

Conceptualizing a model for adoption of cloud computing in education

Cloud computing is a pervasive computing paradigm that has revolutionized how computer infrastructure and services are delivered. Current research trends on cloud computing have been focused on the technology, applications, costs, benefits, and security of cloud computing at the organizational level within small and medium sized enterprises. Little research attention has been paid on adoption and usage of cloud computing at educational establishments and how contextual factors can influence diffusion and adoption of cloud computing. Universities in developing countries are faced with challenging socio-economic and political constraints that limit their ability to invest in expensive information systems to compete on the global stage. Using constructs from the diffusion of innovation theory and the technology acceptance model, this paper proposes a model that takes account of contextual, economic, and technological influences in the perception and adoption of cloud computing at universities in sub-Saharan Africa. Results from a pilot study, based on the model, through a survey of university lecturers and IS experts shows reliability and validity of the instrument and supports its usage for a more extensive study. Implications, potential contributions to research, and suggestions for future study are discussed.     

Cloud computing as an innovation: Percepetion,attitude, and adoption

Cloud computing is a current trend that reveals the next-generation application architecture and it is estimated that by 2013 the cloud market will have reached $8.1bn. While cloud services such as webmail, Flickr and YouTube have been widely used by individuals for some time, it not until relatively recently that organisations have began to use cloud services as a tool for meeting their IT needs. This study aims to investigate how cloud computing is understood by IT professionals and the concerns that IT professionals have in regard to the adoption of cloud services. The study was carried out in Taiwan and used a survey by interview approach to understand IT professionals’ understandings and concerns about cloud computing. The findings of the study suggest that while the benefits of cloud computing such as its computational power and ability to help companies save costs are often mentioned in the literature, the primary concerns that IT managers and software engineers have are compatibility of the cloud with companies’ policy, IS development environment, and business needs; and relative advantages of adopting cloud solutions. The findings also suggest that most IT companies in Taiwan will not adopt cloud computing until the uncertainties associated with cloud computing, e.g. security and standardisation are reduced and successful business models have emerged.     

Examining the critical success factors of cloud computing adoption in the MSMEs by using ISM model

For cutting down cost and improving the efficiency of enterprises, adoption of innovations in ICT especially in cloud computing applications is the need of the time in the highly competitive global environment. It has been noted that generally, the Indian MSMEs are not utilizing the CC applications for the promotion of their business activities and are not availing their benefits. Hence, in the present investigation, the critical success factors (CSFs) for cloud computing adoption (CCA) in the Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are identified through an exhaustive literature review and expert opinions. The association between the identified factors is established by employing an interpretive structural modeling methodology that is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach. Later, the MICMAC analysis is carried out for identifying the factors having high influential power. The results of the study revealed that a CSF namely ‘previous technological experience’ is the most significant factor having the highest driving power. The findings of this research are intended to guide cloud service providers, enterprise managers, and governmental bodies in formulating the strategies and policies for effective implementation of cloud computing facilities and harness the benefits of the same. This study makes a significant contribution to the knowledge base of CC adoption for future research in the subject field.     

Reconciling “doing good” and “doing well” in organizations’ green IT initiatives: A multi-case analysis

Organizations considering green IT initiatives seek to reconcile two significant goals: environmental sustainability (“doing good”) and business profitability (“doing well”). These two purposes, however, are not necessarily aligned and can engender a dilemma in which investing to achieve environmental sustainability may threaten business profitability to some extent. Thus, this research builds on the theoretical perspective of corporate ecological responsiveness and proposes three types of strategic drivers for green IT initiatives (economic, authority, and moral drivers). How various types of organizations may be motivated by these green IT initiative drivers will affect whether organizations can reconcile the objectives of environmental sustainability and business profitability. We further deduce findings from multiple case studies of eight organizations in China and Singapore. The findings illustrate that the characteristics of any given organization influence why various driving factors affect their green IT initiative decisions. Additionally, “doing good” and “doing well” are reconciled when organizations consider the short-term investment and long-term benefit, design appropriate strategy, and receive severe external pressure. We also discuss contributions to research and practice.     

IT治理模式及影响因素:一个基于中国电子政务实施的多案例研究

本文基于IT治理理论和电子政务文献,构建了电子政务实施中IT治理模式的分析框架,并对6个中国地级市信息主管部门的87个电子政务实施项目进行深度调查,识别了5种治理原型,形成了电子政务治理安排矩阵,总结了5种典型的IT治理模式及其形成的主要原因。案例研究结果显示了与西方学者不同的研究结论,中国地方政府电子政务实施中IT治理模式尽管呈现出多样化态势,但是典型治理模式的形成,与电子政务决策项的类型无明显关系,主要受到行政压力和IT部门影响力的共同作用,同时由于与其相匹配的治理结构和治理机制的明显不足,导致相同IT治理模式的治理绩效存在显著差异。     

A fad or future of IT?: A comprehensive literature review on the cloud computing research

Cloud computing is now a global trend and during the past decade, has drawn attention from both academic and business communities. Although the evolution of cloud computing has not reached the maturity level, there is still adequate research about the topic. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the development and evolution of cloud computing over time. A content analysis was conducted for 236 scholarly journal articles, which were published between 2009 and 2014 in order to (i) identify the possible trends and changes in cloud computing over the six years, (ii) compare publishing productivity of journals about the cloud computing subject, and (iii) guide future research about cloud computing. The results show that the majority of the cloud computing research is about “cloud computing adoption” (19%), and it was followed by the “legal and ethical issues” of cloud computing (15%). It is also found that “cloud computing for mobile applications” (6%), “benefits & challenges of cloud computing” (5%) and “energy consumption dimension of cloud computing” (4%) are the least attention-grabbing themes in the literature. However, “cloud computing for mobile applications” and “energy consumption dimension of cloud computing” themes have become popular in the last two years, so they are expected to be trendy topics of the near future. Finally, another finding of this study is that the majority of the articles were published by engineering, information systems or technical journals such as “IT Professional Magazine”, “International Journal of Information Management” and “Mobile Networks and Applications”. It seems as if this topic is generally ignored by the managerial and organizational journals even though the impact of cloud computing on organizations and institutions is immense and is in need of investigation.     

Industry Norms as Predictors of IT Outsourcing Behaviors

How do firm-specific factors impact strategic IT decisions such as IT outsourcing? Do non-financial factors influence these decisions? Whereas prior IT outsourcing research has focused primarily on normative, economic drivers of IT outsourcing, we find evidence of firm-specific non-financial factors influencing IT outsourcing decisions. We focus on the social influence perspective and use IT outsourcing decisions as exemplars of strategic IT decisions. Using a data sample of 77 outsourcing contracts from the automotive industry from 1995 to 2010, we find that even after controlling for financial factors, industry average levels of outsourcing can be used to distinguish strategic outsourcing behaviors of firms for IT enabled services. Firms with above-average levels of IT outsourcing tended to further increase outsourcing, a behavior consistent with perceived Red Queen competitive pressures. Firms with below-average levels of IT outsourcing showed no measurable trends of either increasing or decreasing outsourcing levels. This suggests that firm-specific factors influence IT outsourcing decisions and deviations from non-financial industry norms can indicate how firms make strategic IT decisions.     

新型复合型IT人才需求及培训体系设计

本文采用了“现在——未来——现在”的研究方法。首先,分析目前计算机人才培养中存在的问题;其次,介绍了SOA、云计算等新信息技术,并分析其对人才培养提出的新需求;再次,顺应国内外信息化发展趋势,提出了适应未来信息化建设需求的新型复合型IT人才;最后,设计了新型复合型IT人才的培养体系。     

IT engagement as a blessing and a curse? Examining its antecedents and outcomes in organizations

Information technology (IT) engagement is defined as a need to spend more time using IT. Practice-based examples show that IT engagement can have adverse effects in organizations. Although users can potentially get more work done through IT engagement, observations show that the users might jeopardize their well-being and hamper their work performance. We aimed to investigate this complexity in the research on IT engagement by examining its potential antecedents and outcomes in organizations. Considering the potentially mixed outcomes, we developed a model to examine the effects of IT engagement on personal productivity and strain. We also aimed to explain the antecedents of IT engagement by drawing on the collective expectations for IT use. In particular, we examined the extent to which normative pressure on IT use drives users’ information load and IT engagement. Finally, we sought to understand whether users’ attempts to avert dependency on IT use reduced their IT engagement. Several hypotheses were developed and tested with survey data of 1091 organizational IT users. The findings help explain the role of normative pressure as a key driver of IT engagement and validate the positive and negative outcomes of IT engagement in organizations.     

Service strategies of small cloud service providers: A case study of a small cloud service provider and its clients in Taiwan

Small enterprises play an important role in the technology innovation and economic development of most countries all over the world, particularly in Taiwan. Due to a lack of financial resources and expertise, small enterprises tend to find novel ways to utilize IT resources in order to reduce IT adoption costs, to achieve better flexibility, business agility and scalability, and to react faster to market demands. Whereas Taiwan has been promoting cloud computing to help Taiwanese enterprises adopt more effective information technologies, we found that the service strategies of small cloud service providers are individually differentiated in order to survive in the competitive cloud computing market. This paper reports a case study of a small e-learning service provider and its four clients in Taiwan. Some novel insights are revealed through this case study and recommendations are provided accordingly.