A model of a private sector organisation's intention to adopt cloud computing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Cloud computing is a paradigm for providing and delivering IT services over the Internet. The cloud can provide several benefits for organisations, including cost reduction and flexibility. In developing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, cloud computing is still not widely adopted. In fact, migrating an existing system to the cloud depends on a number of factors that may affect an organisation's decision to adopt the cloud in the private sector in Saudi Arabia. In order to encourage the adoption of cloud computing, it is important to understand why some organisations are willing to move to the cloud while others are not. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the factors that may influence an organisation's decision regarding adopting cloud computing. An integrated model is proposed which incorporates critical factors derived from a literature review on technology adoption and cloud computing along with other factors (such as physical location) that have not been examined in previous studies as main factors that may affect the organisation’s decision to adopt cloud services.

A study was conducted in private sector organisations in Saudi Arabia in order to improve the proposed model. Interviews were carried out with IT experts to review the identified factors and explore other factors that were not mentioned in previous studies. The second stage of this study was an online questionnaire which was used to confirm the existing factors in the cloud adoption model and other factors that were identified from interviews (trialability, external support, industry, and culture). Among the 17 factors examined, the results of the questionnaire revealed that only two, complexity and competitive pressure, did not significantly impact the adoption decision.

Finally, a questionnaire was conducted with 300 IT staff in different organisations in the private sector in Saudi Arabia, in order to test the model for cloud adoption and to explore factors that were positively or negatively associated with cloud adoption. The findings of the evaluation study showed that there was both a direct and indirect effect of the factors on an organisation's intention to adopt the cloud. The findings of this study showed that quality of service and trust are the most influential determinants of cloud adoption. However, security and privacy concerns still prevent cloud adoption in this country. Furthermore, the physical location had a significant direct effect on compliance with regulation and privacy.

This study also showed that the effect of these variables differed according to organisation size and in adopter and non-adopter companies. The results confirmed that the proposed model was well-fitted with the collected data. Thus, the developed model is valuable in explaining the adoption of the cloud at organisational level. Overall, the findings of this research provide great value in terms of guidelines to the organisations, cloud providers, managers, government and policy makers on ways of increasing the implementation and encouraging the spread of cloud computing in Middle Eastern countries particularly in Saudi Arabia.

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ORCID for Gary Wills: orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-4088

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