An empirical study of factors influencing cloud adoption among private sector organisations

In many developing countries such as Saudi Arabia the adoption of cloud computing is still at an early stage. This research aims to investigate the influencing factors in the decision to adopt cloud computing in the private sector. An integrated model is proposed incorporating critical factors derived from a literature review, along with other factors (such as physical location) that have not been examined in previous studies as main factors in the organisation's decision to adopt cloud services. Data were collected from 300 IT staff in different organisations in the private sector in Saudi Arabia, in order to test the cloud adoption model and explore factors that were positively or negatively associated with cloud adoption. The most influential determinants of cloud adoption were found to be quality of service and trust. However, security and privacy concerns still prevent cloud adoption in this country. This study also showed that the effect of these variables differed according to organisation size and in adopter and non-adopter companies. Overall, these research findings provide valuable guidelines to cloud providers, managers, and government policy makers on ways of encouraging the spread of cloud computing in Middle Eastern countries and increasing its implementation, particularly in Saudi Arabia.