Title: Determinants of cloud computing adoption by SMEs

Authors: R. Vidhyalakshmi; Vikas Kumar

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, JJT University, Jhunjhunu – 333001, Rajasthan, India ' School of Business Studies, Sharda University, Plot No. 32-34, Knowledge Park-3, Greater Noida – 201306, U.P, India

Abstract: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), use information and communication technology (ICT) as a tool for business development cloud computing, one of the major advancement of ICT is alleged to provide a host of benefits, competitive edge and assist to gain a commendable position to enterprises in the market. However, the SMEs do not realise the benefits of cloud due to the lack of know-how and the limitations of the new technologies. This also slows down cloud adoption for their business to a greater extent. They need to view beyond the hype of cloud computing and delve into the real values it adds to the business. Scalability, flexibility and dynamic provisioning are the attractive features of the cloud but security; reliability and entrusting public cloud are the darker side of it. The lack of presence of a standard set of metrics makes this task even more complex. This paper lists out the different factors to consider for cloud adoption. This will help the SMEs to evaluate cloud suitability for their business. The financial metrics such as return of investment (ROI) and total cost ownership (TCO) calculations are provided to understand financial metrics before cloud adoption.

Keywords: software as a service; SaaS; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; return on investment; ROI; total cost of ownership; TCO; cloud determinants; cloud adoption costs; scalability; reliability; cloud computing; flexibility; dynamic provisioning; cloud suitability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2016.076878

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2016 Vol.22 No.3, pp.375 - 395

Received: 12 Dec 2014
Accepted: 22 Jan 2015
Published online: 05 Jun 2016 *

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