Abstract
Cloud service has been worldwide discussed recently. It is not only a service adoption issue, but also an IT strategic planning, especially it is viewed as a new way of IT outsourcing to enterprises. However, most of current studies of cloud adoption focus on benefits and concerns from technology point of view only, and neglect organization’s own characteristics such as their history, experience, and capability when considering cloud adoption. In this study, we develop our research model from a viewpoint of organization history, and apply three theories: path dependency, switching costs, and network effects to explain firms' willingness of cloud adoption. The model is empirically tested by 200 Taiwanese public firms. We found that path dependence (history effect) is indeed an important factor affecting firms’ willingness of cloud adoption; a firm with more satisfied IT outsourcing experience will have higher intention to adopt cloud. Second, intangible switching costs (economic risk costs) are the biggest concern for potential cloud adopters, while tangible switching costs have very limited impacts. Third, we found that network effects have not formed within users. Current cloud users are those technology innovators or early adopters, who do not care whether they can receive any benefits from network externalities. The proposed framework could assist cloud vendors in choosing their target market, and know the firms’ perception to cloud service at the early stage of cloud service developing.