Cloud adoption for organisations in the eThekwini area.

Abstract

Cloud computing is a computing model that enables developing countries to open new business ventures without having to spend extensive amounts of money in upfront capital investment; “cloud computing is a practical approach to experience direct cost benefits, and it has the potential to transform a data centre from a capital-intensive set up to a variable priced environment. The main character of cloud computing is in the virtualization, distribution and dynamically extendibility” (Chauhan, 2012, p. 1). Of all the models that utilise the network as means for delivering computing resources, cloud computing is the best one yet; the cloud is more scalable and allows consumers to add and remove resources as their computational needs change without impacting business processes (Nuseibeh, 2011). There are other opportunities that organisations stand to benefit from cloud computing adoption, but in spite of all the opportunities, the rate at which organisations are adopting cloud Computing is increasing at a slower pace than expected in South Africa. From the statistics released in 2018 by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, it was highlighted that South Africa had fallen behind in its efforts to adopt Cloud Computing and different reasons were highlighted as a cause of this lag (BSA, 2018).

This research study aimed to investigate potential issues that impacted the organisation's desire to adopt the cloud resulting in the low adoption rate. The technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework was the framework that was used in this research study. Four research questions were developed as part of achieving the objectives for this research study. A sample of organisations in the KwaZulu-Natal province was identified for this research study using the convenience sampling technique and an online survey hosted in Survey Monkey was sent out to the selected organisations. The collected data were analysed using SPSS tools. After analysis was performed on the data, it was found that most challenges that organisations faced were from external factors like infrastructure readiness, which organisations had no control over. Internal challenges also affected the organisation’s adoption and usage of the cloud, but when data was grouped according to either belonging to the internal or external group, it was found that external issues affected organisations more than internal issues.