Cloud Computing Adoption Factors and Processes for Enterprises

A Systematic Literature Review

Rania Fahim El-Gazzar

Department of Information Systems, University of Agder, Gimlemoen 25A, Kristiansand, Norway

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Adoption, Implementation, Integration, Evaluation, IT Governance, Decision, Cost,

Security, Regulations, Enterprise.

Abstract: Cloud computing (CC) has received an increasing interest from enterprises since its inception. With its

innovative Information Technology (IT) services delivery model, CC could add technical and strategic

business values to enterprises. However, it poses highly concerning, internal and external, issues. This paper

presents a systematic literature review to explore cloud computing adoption processes in the context of

enterprise users and the factors that affect these processes. This is achieved by reviewing 37 articles

published about CC adoption. Using the grounded theory approach, articles are classified into eight main

categories: internal, external, evaluation, proof of concept, adoption decision, implementation and

integration, IT governance, and confirmation. This is concluded in two abstract categories: CC adoption

factors and CC adoption processes whereas the former affect the latter. The results of this review indicate

that there are serious issues need to be tackled before enterprises decide to adopt CC. Based on the findings

of this review, the paper provides future Information Systems (IS) research directions toward the previously

under-investigated areas regarding the phenomenon. This involved the call for further theoretical and in-

depth empirical contributions to the area of CC adoption by enterprises.

1 INTRODUCTION

CC is receiving a notable interest from enterprise

users nowadays. It could revolutionize the way

enterprises acquire and manage their needs from

computing resources efficiently and cost-effectively.

Thus, enterprises are able to focus on their core

business activities; consequently, productivity is

increased (Garrison et al. 2012). The adoption of CC

is growing rapidly due to the scalability, flexibility,

agility, and simplicity it offers to enterprises

(Parakala and Udhas, 2011); (Herhalt and Cochrane,

2012); (Venters and Whitley, 2012). A recent survey

by (RightScale, 2013) on the adoption rates of CC

by enterprises reported that 77% of large enterprises

are adopting CC while 73% of small and medium

enterprises (SMEs) are adopting CC. CC is defined

by the National Institute of Standards and

Technology (NIST) as “a model for enabling

convenient, on-demand network access to a shared

pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.,

networks, servers, storage, applications, and

services) that can be rapidly provisioned and

released with minimal management effort or service

provider interaction” (Hogan et al. 2011, p.14).

Cloud service providers offer three different service

models depending on the enterprise’s requirements

(i.e., Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-

Service (PaaS), and/or Infrastructure-as-a-Service

(IaaS)). CC service models share five common

essential characteristics of CC (i.e., on-demand self-

service, broad network access, resource pooling,

rapid elasticity, and measured service). CC services

can be deployed in one or combination of the four

deployment models (i.e., public, private, community,

or hybrid) (Mell and Grance, 2011). A recent survey

reported that 61% of enterprises are currently using

public clouds while 38% are using private clouds

and 29% are using hybrid clouds (RightScale, 2013).

In spite of its appealing benefits for enterprises,

CC arouses serious technical, economic, ethical,

legal, and managerial issues (Marston et al., 2011);

(Venters and Whitley, 2012). This review is

important for two reasons. First, it complements the

previous literature that focused more on technical

issues of CC with less attention to business issues

regarding the adoption of CC (Yang and Tate,

2012). Second, it systematically offers detailed

Fahim El-Gazzar R..

Cloud Computing Adoption Factors and Processes for Enterprises - A Systematic Literature Review.

DOI: 10.5220/0004841900780087

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER-2014), pages 78-87

ISBN: 978-989-758-019-2

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

perspectives on CC adoption factors and processes

as CC has unique attributes that involve not only

technical and managerial aspects, but its use also

needs to comply with legal issues (Heiser and

Nicolett, 2008). Further, there is a lack of in-depth

studies about issues related to CC adoption process

in the context of enterprise users (Yang and Tate

2012); (Timmermans et al., 2010).

The purpose of this paper is to systematically

review the extant literature in IS research with an

attempt to answer these two questions: what are the

processes of adopting CC by enterprises? And what

are the factors that affect these processes?

Therewith, the under-investigated issues are

identified and future IS research pathways are

proposed accordingly. This review is important for

two reasons.

The remainder of this paper is organized as

follows: Section 2 presents the methodology

followed for conducting the systematic literature

search process and classification schemes adopted.

Section 3 presents the findings from the review.

Implications for future IS research are discussed in

Section 4. Conclusions of this review are presented

in Section 5.

2 RESEARCH METHOD

This paper aims at conducting a systematic literature

review method to represent the current state of IS

research regarding CC adoption issues in the context

of enterprise users. This literature review process is

following the fundamental guidelines for conducting

an effective literature review by (Webster and

Watson, 2002); (Levy and Ellis, 2006); (vom Brocke

et al., 2009). This literature review process is done

within boundaries (Webster and Watson 2002). The

contextual boundary is within the scope of CC

adoption by enterprise users, as there are significant

issues need to be addressed before enterprises start

using clouds (Marston et al., 2011). The temporal

boundary of this review covers the published articles

in all previous years until August 2013.

2.1 Literature Search Process

Literature search process of this review involved

querying seven quality scholarly literature databases

(AISeL, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost,

ProQuest, Wiley online library, and ACM digital

library). These databases provide access to IS

leading journals and high quality peer-reviewed IS

conferences (Levy and Ellis, 2006). The search

criterion was limited to articles’ titles to ensure the

relevance of the articles. The phrases used for

searching all the seven databases are ‘cloud

computing’ and ‘adopt*’. This initially resulted in

69 articles.

The practical screen involved, manually, reading

the abstract of the articles to decide their relevance

to the research question raised by this review.

Further, the filtering criteria involved the exclusion

of recurring articles, research-in-progress articles,

articles that are not written in English, periodical

articles published by news websites, and trade

journals and magazines. These exclusion criteria are

defined to delimit the sample of articles so that the

literature review becomes practically manageable

(Okoli and Schabram, 2010). Eventually, this

resulted in 37 articles ready for the classification.

2.2 Classification Scheme

The reviewed articles are classified according to the

research methods to identify how adequately the

adoption of CC is researched. Research methods

used in the reviewed articles are lab experiment,

field inquiry, Delphi study, interviews, descriptive

research, case study, and survey. Some articles were

labelled under ‘conceptual paper’, as they did not

have a methodology section and providing some

concepts or adopting theories without an empirical

testing.

This review sought to develop a classification

scheme to better gain insights from the preceding

academic contributions to the area of CC adoption.

Classification of the 37 articles according to cloud

adoption issues involved using bottom-up Grounded

Theory (GT) approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967).

GT approach is said to be valuable for conducting a

rigorous literature review (Wolfswinkel et al., 2011),

“instead of force-fitting the data to an a priori

theory” (Rich 2012, p.3).

The classification process involved a close

reading of the articles. Then, the open coding is

utilized to and resulted in labelling 28 concepts.

Next, the axial coding is applied and resulted in

grouping the 28 subcategories into eight

corresponding categories (i.e., internal, external,

evaluation, proof of concept, adoption decision,

implementation and integration, IT governance, and

confirmation). Then, selective coding was applied to

integrate the eight main categories and resulted in

two abstract categories: cloud adoption factors (i.e.,

internal and external) and cloud adoption processes

(i.e., evaluation, proof of concept, adoption decision,

implementation and integration, IT governance, and

CloudComputingAdoptionFactorsandProcessesforEnterprises-ASystematicLiteratureReview

confirmation) whereas the former influence the latter

(see Figure 1). To avoid a coarse analysis, these

factors and processes are elaborated in more details

in this review.

3 FINDINGS

The mapping of articles to the grounded

classification scheme and research methods is

demonstrated in Table 1.

CC Adoption Factors. Comprise internal and

external factors that have impact on CC adoption

processes.

External Factors. This comprises factors related to

the outside social environment in which the

enterprise operates, and by which its CC adoption is

influenced. The adoption of CC is, arguably,

surrounded by different levels of environmental and

inter-organizational uncertainties (Cegielski et al.,

2012). There is a wide emphasize on the importance

of government regulations at the national and

international levels (Espadanal and Oliveira, 2012);

(Nuseibeh, 2011); (Nkhoma et al., 2013). In spite of

their role to facilitate the CC adoption securely, the

lack of government regulations can hinder

enterprises from adopting the cloud (Nkhoma et al.,

2013); (Luoma and Nyberg, 2011). Some

regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for

corporate accounting data and Health Insurance

Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), have

been enacted before CC being increasingly adopted

and they might not be sufficient to facilitate its

adoption (Kim et al., 2009). However, some

countries started to enact laws specific to CC such as

cloud first policy in the USA and cloud computing

strategy by the Australian government (Bhat, 2013).

The inconsistency of international government

regulations is a further concern. Some countries tend

to restrict enterprises to store their data in cloud

infrastructure only if it is within the borders (Jensen

et al., 2011). For instance, the EU’s privacy laws

prohibit the exchange of personal information

outside the users’ jurisdiction (Mcgeogh and

Donnellan 2013). This because of cloud providers

running outside their home country must comply

with the host country’s regulations and government

surveillance which is difficult for enterprises to cope

(Abokhodair et al., 2012); (Bhat, 2013). In line with

this, standards are also cited to be an important

factor for dealing with enterprises’ concerns about

security and interoperability of cloud solutions

(Nuseibeh, 2011); (Mcgeogh and Donnellan, 2013).

Although they are still missing in the puzzle of CC

picture for enterprises (Bhat, 2013); (Lin and Chen,

2012); (Nkhoma et al., 2013), some efforts to

develop security standards took place. For instance,

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)’s document Security

Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud

Computing for managing CC risks (Mcgeogh and

Donnellan, 2013). Eventually, cloud providers

would have to comply with government regulations

and industrial standards to gain liability, reputation,

and trustworthiness among their potential and

present enterprise users (Bhat, 2013).

Cloud providers are required to be transparent in

explaining information to enterprises about possible

benefits and risks from adopting CC (Dargha, 2012).

Cloud providers build their reputation by their

experience in managing enterprises’ needs and

concerns in a responsible manner (Jensen et al.,

2011); (Malladi and Krishnan, 2012); (Nuseibeh,

2011). This is enabled by delivering the promised

benefits from CC to enterprises and protecting their

data from potential threats including fate sharing in

case the cloud provider went out of business (Iyer et

al., 2013); (Nuseibeh, 2011). Further, cloud

providers’ demonstration of successful business

cases and models is likely to enable CC adoption

decision (Lin and Chen, 2012); (Alshamaila and

Papagiannidis, 2013). Cloud providers might trigger

a major concern to if they outsource some of their

services to another service provider (Nuseibeh,

2011). Observing business partners perceiving

benefits from using CC is proved to be an important

motive towards its adoption (Low et al., 2011); (Lin

and Chen, 2012). Business partners’ request, with

power, the enterprise to adopt CC to keep on

collaboration with them (Cegielski et al., 2012).

Additionally, competitors play an effective role in

incentivizing enterprises to adopt CC for gaining

market visibility, operation efficiency, and new

business opportunities (Espadanal and Oliveira,

2012); (Borgman et al., 2013), especially when the

enterprise operates in a high-tech rapidly changing

industry (Low et al., 2011); (Alshamaila and

Papagiannidis, 2013). However, competitors

pressure may not be relevant to SMEs as they are

concerned about other CC adoption issues

(Alshamaila and Papagiannidis, 2013).

Internal Factors. This comprises the enterprise’s

internal characteristics and capabilities that affect its

CC adoption process. The enterprise’s willingness to

invest in and use CC both financially and

organizationally is claimed to be an important

indicator for the adoption of CC (Espadanal and

Oliveira, 2012); (Rath et al., 2012). This depends on

CLOSER2014-4thInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience

the role of the top management’s IT knowledge and

capability of providing the suitable organizational

climate for adopting CC (Bharadwaj and Lal, 2012);

(Borgman et al., 2013; Alshamaila and

Papagiannidis, 2013). Top management activities

involve: (1) understanding of CC and its

architecture, service models, and strategic values

(Luoma and Nyberg, 2011); (Espadanal and

Oliveira, 2012); (Misra and Mondal, 2011). (2)

identifying enterprise’s business needs and aligning

IT decisions with business strategies (Mcgeogh and

Donnellan, 2013); (Subramanian, 2012). (3)

evaluating the readiness of the existing IT

infrastructure, IT knowledge and skills of the human

resources, available resources, and culture (Luoma

and Nyberg, 2011); (Borgman et al., 2013);

(Espadanal and Oliveira, 2012). (4) holding the

steering wheel towards CC adoption (i.e., decide

adoption strategy, govern integration and

implementation, and evaluate cloud services after

use) with the guidance of external regulatory and

professional bodies (Morgan and Conboy, 2013);

(Mcgeogh and Donnellan, 2013). Additionally, firm

size is an important factor to CC adoption

(Espadanal and Oliveira, 2012); (Borgman et al.,

2013); (Low et al., 2011). A survey study conducted

in Taiwan indicated that large enterprises are likely

to adopt CC (Low et al. 2011). Contrarily, a survey

study in India indicated that SMEs can benefit the

most (Rath et al., 2012). Large enterprises are

claimed to have sufficient resources to afford on-

premise solutions (Borgman et al., 2013).

Enterprises need to further ensure compliance of CC

solutions with the internal (i.e., corporate policies)

and external (i.e., regulations and standards)

constraints (Morgan and Conboy, 2013); (Mcgeogh

and Donnellan, 2013); (Borgman et al., 2013).

Figure 1: Cloud Computing Adoption Factors and

Processes.

Further, the cloud/IT skills of non-IT employees

is said to be a crucial factor affecting CC adoption;

as they may be involved in strategic IT decisions,

their understanding of CC is very important

(Borgman et al., 2013); (Low et al., 2011);

(Espadanal and Oliveira, 2012). Likewise, IT

employees would have to adjust their skills and be

aware of CC benefits and risks and how to deal with

the risks instead of being overprotective (Morgan

and Conboy, 2013). Another factor affecting CC

adoption decision is the enterprise’s prior experience

and familiarity with similar technologies such as

virtualization (Alshamaila and Papagiannidis, 2013).

CC Adoption Processes. Are processes that

enterprises normally follow to adopt CC along with

responsibilities and challenges faced in each process.

Evaluation. Prior to CC adoption, the top

management is responsible for evaluating the

enterprise’s suitability for adopting CC as well as

the suitability of CC for the enterprise (Misra and

Mondal, 2011); (Lin and Chen, 2012). This includes:

(1) evaluating costs and benefits associated with CC

such as profitability, comparing the revenue

generated from the firm’s IT resources with the

revenue expected from CC, ROI, cost of migration

and integration, and cost of implementation (Misra

and Mondal, 2011; (Celine) Hoe et al., 2012). (2)

evaluating the impact of CC on people and business

processes (Mcgeogh and Donnellan 2013). (3)

evaluating the internal readiness of the enterprise,

existing IT infrastructure and IT human resources,

for adopting CC (Low et al., 2011). (4) selecting the

cloud service provider based on cloud provider’s

capability to provide a robust security controls,

enterprise’s understanding of issues related to the

control over the data, the type of service model

needed, and the perceived cloud provider’s honesty,

reputation, and sustainability (Onwudebelu and

Chukuka, 2012); (Bharadwaj and Lal, 2012).

Proof of Concept. Trying cloud services prior to the

actual adoption to evaluate its applicability for the

enterprise is likely to convince the enterprise to

adopt CC (Lin and Chen, 2012). Trialability proved

to have a positive impact on the adoption of CC

(Alshamaila and Papagiannidis, 2013). There is a

wide agreement on the significant influence of

perceived benefits and risks on the adoption of cloud

services (Alshamaila and Papagiannidis 2013); (Iyer

et al., 2013). A survey study reported that the

management’s perception of security, cost-

effectiveness, and IT compliance are likely to have a

significant impact on the decision to adopt CC

(Opala and Rahman, 2013). CC brings plenty of

benefits that are relatively convincing for enterprises

CloudComputingAdoptionFactorsandProcessesforEnterprises-ASystematicLiteratureReview

to adopt it (i.e., cost savings, agility, flexibility, ease

of use, scalability, facilitating collaboration between

business partners, less operational effort on Chief

Information Officers (CIOs), and increased

productivity) (Borgman et al., 2013); (Malladi and

Krishnan, 2012); (Nkhoma et al., 2013); (Lin and

Chen, 2012). With all these appealing benefits, yet

some SMEs are still negative to adopt CC services

(Alshamaila and Papagiannidis, 2013). They are

concerned about various types of risks (Jensen et al.,

2011); (Nkhoma et al., 2013); (Lin and Chen, 2012);

(Iyer et al., 2013): (a) policy and organizational

risks: this covers the risk of vendor and data lock-in.

(b) technical risks: this includes loss of data,

downtime, and cyber-attacks. (c) Legal risks: this

includes data protection regulations and licensing

issues. (d) Non-technical risks: this refers to the

misuse of cloud services and natural disasters.

According to a survey study in India on four

sectors (SMEs, education, banking, hospital) showed

that vendor risk was dominating among SMEs and

education sectors, while security risk was

dominating among banking and hospital sectors

(Iyer et al., 2013). Regarding performance risks,

moving a huge amount of data to cloud servers takes

a long time, and when moving further in the

adoption, this will require increasing bandwidth and

connectivity which is costly (Morgan and Conboy,

2013).

Adoption Decision. When deciding to adopt CC

services, the top management is involved in: (1)

evaluating core business requirements and

competencies (Subramanian, 2012). (2) determining

what data and applications should move to the cloud

(i.e., critical vs. non-critical data and applications)

(Kim et al., 2009); (Misra and Mondal, 2011);

(Kantarcioglu et al., 2011). (3) evaluating the

strategic value of CC such as agility by delivering

strong coordination IT capabilities, process

management maturity, and reduced operational

burden on CIOs so they can focus on strategic

activities (Malladi and Krishnan, 2012). (4) planning

for implementation of CC systems; the managerial

time required to plan and implement cloud solutions

was not problematic (Rath et al., 2012), while the

problem was the planning for implementation of

specific deployment models that suite the current

applications (Dargha, 2012). (5) selecting the right

service model based on the enterprise’s needs

(Bamiah et al., 2012); (Onwudebelu and Chukuka,

2012). (6) selecting deployment models based on the

sensitivity of the applications; if the applications are

determined to be core, then they should be deployed

on a private cloud, and if the applications are

determined to be non-core, then they should be

deployed on a public cloud (Dargha, 2012). Another

study suggests the core applications should not be

deployed on the cloud at all (Kim et al. 2009). (7)

negotiating cloud service contract and SLA with the

cloud provider based on the sensitivity of the data

(Misra and Mondal, 2011), and reaching an

agreement on data ownership, data confidentiality,

risk management, contract terms and termination

effect, location of the data, and guarantee of service

availability (Tsai et al., 2010); (Onwudebelu and

Chukuka, 2012).

Implementation and Integration. Compared to on-

premise approach, cloud systems can be

implemented and running in 24 hours instead of six

months (Morgan and Conboy, 2013). Thus,

implementation of cloud systems is not problematic

for enterprises, while integrating cloud systems with

the enterprise’s existing IT infrastructure can

negatively impact their adoption of CC (Morgan and

Conboy, 2013). Further, the use of cloud system by

IT staff is straightforward, while it is challenging for

the non-IT staff. This can be attributed to the degree

of complexity of cloud systems in terms of the ease

of understanding, use, and implementation or

integration of cloud services. Although CC proved

to be easy to understand and use, it arouses

integration complexity issues (Borgman et al.,

2013). Complexity is claimed to be a barrier to the

adoption of CC (Lin and Chen, 2012); (Espadanal

and Oliveira, 2012); (Low et al., 2011); (Borgman et

al., 2013). Integration problems emerge from the

less standardized interoperability between cloud

systems and the existing IT infrastructure which

triggers integration cost (Borgman et al., 2013).

Incompatibility of cloud solutions with existing IT

infrastructure can be a barrier to the adoption of CC

(Low et al., 2011).

IT Governance. The loss of IT governance within

the enterprise appeared to be a major concern

because the data and applications are under the

control of the cloud provider (Onwudebelu and

Chukuka, 2012); (Mcgeogh and Donnellan, 2013).

Enterprises are advised to conduct audit trail

meetings with the cloud provider to ensure risk free

implementation of cloud solutions that complies

with regulations, standards, and enterprise policies

(Morgan and Conboy, 2013). This is enabled by the

top management through IT governance structures

(i.e., federal or centralized) and processes (i.e.,

request, prioritize, fund, monitor, enforce, and

realign) (Borgman et al., 2013). Contrarily, IT

governance processes in highly regulated industries

will decelerate the adoption of CC (Borgman et al.,

CLOSER2014-4thInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience

2013). Likewise, IT governance processes might

hinder the adoption if the integration of cloud

solutions with the existing infrastructure appeared to

be difficult (Borgman et al., 2013).

Despite the massive advancements in securing

the cloud, yet these security solutions are not tested

extensively (Misra and Mondal, 2011). This matter

could be dissolved by IT governance initiatives to

ensure that enterprise policies, security standards,

and legal requirements are met (Borgman et al.,

2013; Morgan and Conboy, 2013). IT governance is

attained by identifying responsibilities, for instance,

“the cloud provider is responsible for the security of

the hypervisor and below, while the customer’s

responsibility begins at the operating system level

and above” (Mcgeogh and Donnellan, 2013, p.4).

While in some cases, data security at the level of

PaaS and IaaS service models is a shared

responsibility between the cloud service provider

and the adopting enterprise (Bamiah et al., 2012).

Furthermore, pursuing traceability and auditability

are cited to have impact on CC adoption (Morgan

and Conboy, 2013). Cloud providers are required to

provide traceable access controls to govern (i.e.,

who can access what object under which conditions)

that can be validated, by top management, for its

conformity to internal and external constraints

(Morgan and Conboy, 2013). These controls are

used to ensure data integrity and confidentiality

(Onwudebelu and Chukuka, 2012); (Morgan and

Conboy, 2013).

In regard with risk management during the

planning for CC implementation, a study suggests

that the enterprise should consider evaluating the

risk of storage damage, data loss, and network

security (Tsai et al., 2010). For instance, the

enterprise would maintain an on-site backup of the

data moved to the cloud (Kim et al., 2009).

Eventually, securing enterprise’s information from

potential risks is more than processes, technical

solutions, and people; it is an enterprise wide

security strategy to orchestrate these various

elements (Opala and Rahman, 2013).

Confirmation. Only one study proposed a model for

implementation and confirmation stages in adopting

CC (Dargha, 2012). This study suggests the

evaluation of cloud services based on the perceived

attributes from using cloud services (i.e., relative

advantage, complexity, compatibility, and

trialability) to decide whether to continue on using

cloud services or not.

4 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE

RESEARCH AVENUES

This article sought to review the current state of IS

research regarding CC adoption in the context of

enterprise users. The review involved classifying the

extant literature into CC adoption factors and

processes that emerged from the reviewed articles

along with research methods employed. This review

shows that no IS journal articles found yet

contributing to this research area. While few IS

conference articles appeared to contribute to the

understanding of CC adoption. On the other hand,

articles from other disciplinary journal and

conference outlets were dominant in investigating

the phenomenon.

Table 1 indicates a lack of in-depth field and

case studies regarding CC adoption processes

compared to the CC adoption factors, while the

quantitative (i.e., surveys) studies and conceptual

articles are dominating. However, the majority of

these theoretical attempts have not been tested yet.

For instance, a study proposed, theoretically, a CC

adoption assessment model that considers criteria for

selecting the cloud service provider but this model

has not been tested empirically yet (Nasir and Niazi,

2011). Hence, further qualitative research needs to

be undertaken to explore further issues and test

empirically the previous theoretical developments

regarding this area. Consequently, this triggers

questions on the IS research round table: Why

enterprises adopt CC in spite of its potential risks?

Or reversely, why enterprises do not adopt CC in

spite of its potential benefits? These questions need

to be investigated thoroughly using multiple

qualitative case studies in different contexts (i.e.,

countries and industries) to better understand CC

adoption factors and processes. Noteworthy, all the

reviewed articles study cloud adoption issues in a

list-like broad perspective. Therefore, there is a need

for interpretive case studies to investigate each of

the issues found from this review (Walsham, 1995).

Obviously, Table 1 shows that CC adoption

processes received less attention from IS researchers

in terms of exploring the challenges faced in each

process and how enterprises cope with these

challenges for risk free adoption of cloud services.

Further, there is a conflict regarding the relationship

between the firm’s size and the likelihood to adopt

CC which needs more in-depth studies to address

this conflict. Further, CC is recognized as a cost

reduction solution, however, this cost reduction may

not be significant particularly in SMEs sector as

reported by a survey study conducted in India (Iyer

CloudComputingAdoptionFactorsandProcessesforEnterprises-ASystematicLiteratureReview

Table 1: Mapping of articles to classification scheme and research methods.

et al., 2013). Likewise, when the enterprise

maintains an on-premise backup, this adds to the

cost as well (Kim et al., 2009). Moreover, there is a

need for further exploring the impact of IT

CLOSER2014-4thInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience

governance processes throughout the

implementation process. There still plentiful legal,

ethical and inter-organizational or institutional issues

need to be investigated regarding improvements of

laws and standards. It would be insightful to

investigate internal readiness and selection of cloud

provider issues in the context of SMEs and/or large

enterprises.

Further, if CC helps enterprises reduce IT-related

costs, then how significant will be this cost

reduction? Further studies should explore the impact

of vendor and cloud solutions compatibility,

trialability, and observability on the adoption of

cloud services. Trust issues are not addressed

extensively in the reviewed articles although it is

claimed to be important for a successful adoption of

CC (Garrison et al., 2012). In spite of its appealing

merits it brings to enterprises (i.e., cost savings,

flexibility, efficiency, agility and so forth), CC puts

enterprises in a decisive choice between on-premise

and on-demand approaches. In this regard, the

Delphi method would provide insights for IT

managers about what are the most important issues,

and their priorities, that shall be considered when

deciding to adopt cloud solutions (Dalkey, 1972).

Another issue to consider, if CC releases enterprises

from managing the IT infrastructure so they can

focus on their core business activities, then what

data and applications should be moved to the cloud

and what should remain in-house? Delphi studies

can be appropriate for providing recommendations

for practice regarding internal preparation, service

model selection, and contract negotiation issues.

Finally, this review advocates the need for

conducting longitudinal studies to assess the impact

of CC implementation on both technical and

managerial capabilities of the enterprise (i.e.,

integration with existing IT infrastructure, planning,

risk management, and IT governance) as well as the

impact of the confirmation process on the

organizational innovation.

5 CONCLUSION

This paper sought to conduct a systematic review of

the extant literature regarding issues related to CC

adoption process in the context of enterprise users.

This involved exploring the under-investigated

issues and the contributions of IS research regarding

the phenomenon. The classification of reviewed

articles, findings, and implications for future IS

research is achieved according to research methods

and CC adoption factors and processes that emerged

from the utilized grounded theory approach. Yet,

plentiful legal, ethical, and technical, and managerial

issues waiting for IS researchers to explore. Thus,

the paper suggested a future IS research agenda

based on the discussed findings. This article is not

free of limitations; it sought to review only academic

articles from seven literature databases leaving white

papers, magazine articles, other scholarly literature

databases, and articles from forward and backward

search which would help capturing more issues

about CC adoption by enterprises. The search

criteria might be limited as some articles discuss CC

adoption entitled with different words (i.e., utility

computing or application service provision) that may

not have been included in the search results of this

review.

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