Abstract
Cloud computing is a new Information Technology (IT) paradigm which revolutionized the traditional IT provisioning with its cost-reducing, elastic provisioning, and ubiquitous access features. With those promising propaganda, more and more firms are planning to adopt cloud services. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the cloud computing adoption from a firm’s point of view is very important. Although there are abundant introductory and descriptive literature discuss the drivers and barriers of cloud computing adoption, there is very limited empirical study to examine those antecedents using large scale of data. Moreover, a complete and integrated framework to evaluate whether a firm should step into cloud is lacked in the current literature. To bridge this gap, our study uses technology organization environment (TOE) framework to develop a cloud service adoption model. This adoption model not only deals with the level of adoption but also the pricing mechanisms (pay-as-you-go/ license/ unlimited access with fixed monthly fee) and deployment models (public/ private cloud). The model is empirically tested by 200 Taiwanese public firms. Results of low level of adoption rate (SaaS adoption rate=30%; PaaS adoption rate=5%; IaaS adoption rate=13%) indicate that cloud adoption is still at its initial stage. The perceived benefit, business concern in the technology context and IT capability in organization context within the TOE framework can significantly influence cloud computing adoption. As for the pricing mechanism, only IT capability has significant power to identify pay-as-you-go adopter; business concern is the only factor to influence the choice of deployment model. These phenomena show that at this early stage, current adopters are adventurous innovators who love to embrace just launched technologies, to lead the trend instead of being forced by majority to adopt. Also, firms with higher IT capability will tend to choose pay-as-you-go pricing mechanism based on their past adoption experience. Furthermore, the higher level of business concern a firm has, it is more likely for it to choose private cloud due to more control over public cloud. The proposed research model can assist cloud vendors to design their market strategy, and know the firms’ perception toward cloud computing service at this initial stage of market development.