also states, that most enterprises are most proba-
bly not compliant (Miglicco, 2018).
Competence and Knowledge. Depending on the
background and experiences, the qualification for
giving complete and correct answers to all survey
questions might differ between participants. The
Cloud Monitor states for example, that employ-
ees often do not perceive a difference between in-
tern IT solutions and cloud solutions (Bitkom Re-
search GmbH, 2018).
Participants Role within the Enterprise. As
stated before, many employees might not realise
the difference between cloud and intern IT. While
some surveys are open to all, others require cer-
tain positions withing the enterprises, such as the
Cloud Monitor, which restricts participants to be
IT-managers (Bitkom Research GmbH, 2018). A
manager making the decisions might know more,
but time management is one of the hardest parts of
a manager’s job (Kolowich, 2015) which has been
investigated by many researchers for a long time
due to its importance (Oshagbemi, 1995). When
classifying tasks to A tasks - must be done, B tasks
- should be done, C tasks - could be done, D tasks
- delegate to somebody else and E tasks - elimi-
nate, most managers admit that 80 percent of their
time is spent on tasks of type C, D and E. Relevant
points for the quality of the survey answers are
then, how the participation in a survey is classified
for a manager and how precise the manager fills in
the answers as well as the depth of knowledge of
the manager, since especially in large enterprises,
not every manager is involved in or knows about
everything.
Participants of the Same Enterprise. Whether
the participants acquisition and data evaluation al-
low for more than one participant of the same en-
terprise can effect the results. Even though the
answers can differ, e.g. depending on knowledge
and position, strong biases on the enterprise level
are possible.
Kind of the Enterprise. In addition to the busi-
ness section, enterprises and institutions also dif-
fer in their tasks and structure. Chambers of
Industry and Commerce have the duty to assist
enterprises in using new technologies and there-
fore have a different perspective while researchers
might have an affinity for new technologies.
Participants Acquisition Methods. The meth-
ods of participant acquisition can have huge in-
fluence on the participants composition and there-
fore the survey results. For the State of the Cloud
Report from RightScale (a cloud provider), 19
percent of the participants are users of RightScale
solutions (RightScale, 2018) and for the Cloud
Computing Survey, IDG used IDG brands for par-
ticipants acquisition and to be considered quali-
fied respondents must have reported cloud utilisa-
tion was planned or currently leveraged at their or-
ganisation. Furthermore, respondents must have
reported personal involvement in the purchase
process for cloud solutions at their organisation
(IDG Communications, 2018). In contrast, the
surveys from Section 2.1 used the help of Cham-
bers of Commerce and Industry for participants
acquisition, which mainly adresses enterprises in
need for help with new technology.
Summing up, there are many different influencing
factors in addition to the variances inherent for sur-
veys. These influencing factors are not necessarily in-
dependent, e.g. it might be possible that an employee
of a small enterprise knows more or less every used
IT-system, it is unequally harder if not impossible for
an employee of a very large concern. This might also
be affected by the position, yielding a dependence of
the enterprise size, the role within the enterprise and
the knowledge of the person.
3 CONCLUSION
The cloud adoption has vastly increased over the last
years, but even if some surveys show adoption rates
with almost 100 percent, a deeper look at different
surveys and to the circumstances and the background
of the surveys show, that cloud computing is not yet
omnipresent and still several problems especially in
the areas of security and privacy have to be solved, or
at least regarding the perception of these aspects, for
many hesitating enterprises to accept the technology.
For better understanding and the derivation of in-
fluencing factors for surveys, especially in the context
of cloud computing and the cloud adoption, seven sur-
veys were investigated with special attention to their
meta information and backgrounds. Summing up,
nine main influencing factors were identified, namely:
the business section, the enterprise size, ambigui-
ties and understanding, culture and legislation, com-
petence and knowledge, the participants role within
the enterprise, participants of the same enterprise,
the kind of enterprise and the participants acquisition
methods.
Even with complete information about these in-
fluencing factors, which might be unrealistic to have
(none of the seven presented surveys has deep infor-
mation on all the identified influencing factors), also
the absence of meta information can give good expla-
Behind the Surveys: Cloud Adoption at Second Glance
329