Factors affecting Nigerian SMEs intention to adopt cloud computing services

Abstract

Cloud computing is a concept that has been gaining increased attention over the last decade. It is expected to revolutionize how large and small business interact with Computing services by providing computing resources over the internet thus eliminating the cost of traditional infrastructure. Particularly in the case of small and medium scale enterprises, cloud computing can give access to services that would ordinarily cost them significant capital investments and could potentially improve business performance. While the adoption of cloud computing is increasing in other countries, the adoption process has been slow in Nigeria. This necessitated this study where I set out to try and understand the factors that can adopt the intention to adopt cloud computing services in Nigerian SMEs. A conceptual model derived from a combination diffusion of innovation theory and TOE framework was adopted from existing literature. From the model, Cloud relative advantage, flexibility, quality of service, security, privacy, and awareness were hypothesized to affect the intention to adopt cloud computing.

To test the research hypotheses, a quantitative research method was adopted in which a sample of 171 SMEs was used. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to see how the variables affected the intention to adopt. The finding of the result showed that only awareness seemed to affect the intention to adopt cloud computing and all other factors were not significant. It was also found in this study that cloud computing intention to adopt did not vary as a result of organization size and length of operation. The finding of this study suggests that in order to increase the level of adoption of cloud computing in Nigerian SMEs, Cloud service provider and other stakeholders would need to increase the level of awareness.