Cloudrise: Exploring Cloud Computing Adoption and Governance with the TOE Framework

Executives around the globe are investigating the benefits that cloud computing can deliver above and beyond cost savings. What is its contribution to competiveness - through improved agility, expanded business networks, and enhanced decision-making? At the same time, the organizational factors inhibiting or supporting cloud computing adoption are poorly understood. This paper builds on Tornatzky et al.'s Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) frame-work to investigate the factors influencing cloud computing adoption. Another objective pursued is to conceptualize and understand how IT governance processes and structures moderate those factors. Our augmented TOE framework is developed in a set of hypotheses that are tested in a quantitative study of 24 global enterprises across various industries. Our results indeed indicate that the technology and organization context affect implementation decisions. A discussion and identification of next research steps round off the paper.