Chapter 4

Factors Affecting Cloud Technology

Adoption: Potential User’s Perspective

Nicholas A. Ogunde and Jörn Mehnen

Abstract The idea that drives Cloud technology shows great opportunities that
can be exploited by an organization. However, with such opportunities come some
challenges and factors that have to be put into consideration. Knowing and
understanding these factors make an organization better prepared for adopting the
technology. A number of factors have been suspected to affect organization’s
adoption of Cloud technology. The purpose of this chapter is to confirm which
factors actually do affect adoption of the technology. Inspired by the Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM) and an extensive literature review, a working hypoth-
esis of the list of factors that have potentials to affect Cloud technology adoption
was developed. These factors were then assessed by a randomly selected sample of
47 working professionals in the United Kingdom through an online questionnaire.
Analysis of the result shows that Security, Cost, Service Availability, Compliance
and Perceived Usefulness are factors of concern that organizations would have to
deeply consider before moving to the Cloud. It also shows that majority of pro-
fessionals are already aware and substantially educated about cloud technology
and believe they will find the technology easy to learn and use. They also
recommend it to organizations.

N. A. Ogunde (&)
Vodafone, Kilby House, Newbury, Berkshire, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Mehnen
Manufacturing Department, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
e-mail: j.mehnen@cranfield.ac.uk

W. Li and J. Mehnen (eds.), Cloud Manufacturing, Springer Series 77

in Advanced Manufacturing, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-4935-4_4,
 Springer-Verlag London 2013
78 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

4.1 Introduction

4.1.1 Motivation

The underpinning idea behind the Cloud technology in general and Cloud com-
puting in particular have been considered by not a few to be the new IT paradigm.
Yet others believe that the phrase is an over-stretched word. With the volume of
recent research and white papers on the topic however, it can be considered a hot
issue. There have been forecasts that the technology has not only taken the IT
world by storm, but perhaps is here to stay. According to Armbrust et al. [1], Cloud
technology has changed the face of commercial IT, ensuring that computing
services can be treated like a utility—much like water and electricity. Indeed it has
been said that many people are already using cloud technology in different forms
without even realizing it. This for example include things like using the free Yahoo
and Google email, using online file storage by storing files e.g., music over the
internet, watching recorded training seminars that are stored online, the list goes
on and on. If the technology advance as expected, it has good possibility of
changing the IT and business landscape as we have come to know it today.

4.1.2 Background

Gartner in 2009 estimated the value of cloud services revenue to surpass

$56.3 billion, a 21.3 % increase from 2008 revenue of $46.4 billion [2]. It is also
forecasted that the market will reach $150.1 billion in 2013. This upward growth
can of course only continue if many businesses and organizations are and remain
comfortable with cloud computing as a solution that improves productivity. Cloud
technology is a way to improve productivity, it has to be accepted and used by
employees in organizations [3].
Several models have been posited to explain factors that affect the user
acceptance of a technology [3–6]. One such model, the Technology Acceptance
Model (TAM) posits that two beliefs, the perceived usefulness and the perceived
ease of use are of essential importance to a user’s adoption of technology [4]. It
defines the perceived usefulness as the subjective probability of a user that a
particular solution will enhance his productivity in an organization and the per-
ceived ease of use as the degree to which the user thinks the solution will be
without fault. The model has been used in many research works with great success
[7, 8] and has been extended by a number of authors to include other factors. These
works have greatly influenced this research work.
While there have been many papers and research work into Cloud computing
and some on the benefit it offers, there has not really been much work done in
actually analyzing the opportunities and the challenges the innovation offers from
the customer and user point of view. This research work addresses this challenge.
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 79

It reviews cloud adoption and the factors that enhances or inhibits it, but carries out
the research work from the perspective of the would-be customers and users of the
solution. The result of the research should be able to assist decision makers in
understanding what the average computer users and employees consider as pitfalls
and benefits of using the Cloud as a solution.

4.2 Literature Overview

4.2.1 Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been regarded as a new technology trend that is expected to
shape information technology process and the IT marketplace [9]. However, while
not denying the obvious advantages that are possible with the implementation,
several academic writers [10, 11] fail to see it as a new technology. To them, it is
just a natural progression in the demand of information technology services and
products and is based on already existing technological concept like grid com-
puting, virtualization and service oriented architecture [10].

4.2.1.1 What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is considered a phrase that has been quite difficult to define with.
Qian et al. [12] described it as one of the vaguest technical terminology in history.
According to them, this is because the phrase is applicable in so many application
scenarios coupled with the fact that so many organizations have hyped up the
phrase to mean more that it is supposed to Adamov and Erguvan [13] also
described it as a word that is misused a lot. Indeed, not a few definitions exist for
the phrase.
According to the U.S. government’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), Cloud computing can be defined as everywhere, easy and
on-demand access to a shared pool of resources (including networks, servers,
storage, applications) over the network with zero or minimal interaction with or
involvement of the service providers. On the other hand, Buyya et al. [14]
described it as using infrastructure as a sort of ‘‘Cloud’’ where users and
organizations are allowed to access applications and services on demand, no
matter where they are located. Infrastructure here represents huge data centre
that are monitored and managed by a service provider. He goes on to define
Cloud as ‘‘a type of parallel and distributed system consisting of a collection of
inter-connected and virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned and
presented as one or more unified computing resource(s) based on service-level
agreements established through negotiation between the service provider and
consumers’’.
80 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

Cloud computing introduces three new concept to the term infrastructure [1].
These are:
• The impression that computing resource is infinite and so users do not need to
plan much ahead for over utilization,
• The fact that organizations do not need to commit themselves to particular
resource utilization. They can simply start small and upgrade as the need arises,
• The ability to pay for only the resources they have used, with the option to
upgrade at any stage of utilization and downgrade after use of computing
resources.
With Cloud technology organizations are able to host their applications or data
with a Cloud service provider, access it from anywhere (using a browser) and pay
for just the computing facilities they use much like a household will pay for the use
of a utility.

4.2.1.2 Types of Clouds

In literature one distinguished typically three types of Clouds:

Private Cloud This is a Cloud environment that is built on a private network,
with the organization having control over data, security and quality of service.
Usually, this kind of cloud is built for the use of an organization and can be
managed by the organization’s IT.
Public Cloud This kind of cloud is usually managed and hosted by a third party
cloud service provider with computing resources being dynamically provisioned
over the internet using web applications or web browsers.
Hybrid Cloud This is made up of a combination of private and public Clouds.
Here, part of the applications of an organization runs on a private cloud, while the
other services are provisioned over the public Cloud [15].

4.2.1.3 Cloud Computing Architecture

According to Zhang et al. [16], Cloud architecture can be considered to be made

up of the four layers that are closely knitted together to deliver the hosting service.
These are listed below:
The Hardware/Data centre layer This consists of the physical resources of the
cloud including things like servers, routers, switches etc. It is usually made of
aggregated resources that are organized to function as a single fault tolerant
resource.
The infrastructure layer This is also called the virtualization layer and is where
the pool of necessary computing resources is deployed. The layer makes use of

virtualization technologies such as that of VMware . This layer is important and is
used for dynamic service provisioning.
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 81

The platform layer This layer resides on the infrastructure layer and consists of
the operating systems and the application frameworks. This layer operates to

remove the burden of deploying applications to the VMware containers.
The application layer These are the applications that actually provide the ser-
vices offered by the cloud and are located at the top layer. These applications have
the ability to automatically scale to performance.

4.2.1.4 Cloud Computing Service Types

Cloud computing services can be categorized into three types. They are explained
below:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) This refers to computing resources with
guaranteed processing power and storage abilities being offered as a service
usually in the form of virtual machines. An example of this service is the Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Platform as a Service (PaaS) This refers to providing operating system and the
accompanying resources that are necessary to use applications. In short one can
consider this as an IaaS with a software installed already. An example is the
Microsoft Azure and Google AppEngine.
Software as a Service (SaaS) This is providing a specific application as an on
demand service. An example is the Google apps [15].

4.2.1.5 Major Cloud Services by Providers

Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), one of the most common Cloud
computing platforms adopted by organizations, allow an organization to use web
services interface to provision different types of operating systems and load them
with as much customized applications as desired [17]. Alternatively, the orga-
nization has the option of using one of the already built and customized Amazon
virtual Images (AMI) with software based on needs. The solution allows
capacity to be configured with minimal effort, provides adequate control of
technology resources and offers the added advantage of only paying for capacity
per hour with no long term commitment. Another Amazon cloud service is the
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). It provides a web interface to
store and retrieve large volume of data at any time and from anywhere with
capacity up to 5 Terabytes [18]. Prices are charged per data transfer, based on
location of you ‘‘Amazon bucket’’ which is the region you have chosen to
domicile your data.
Google App Engine [19] offers opportunity to run applications on Google’s
computing infrastructure. Applications can be built using standard java technol-
ogies or any other language using a JVM based interpreter or converter. A dedi-
cated native python runtime environment is also provided. Application can be
published to be shared with the whole world or restricted to users of the
82 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

organization. A web page administration console is also provided to the users for
managing the applications. Google offers free 500 mb of storage with enough CPU
capacity to support about five million page hits per month for the engine which can
be upgraded to raise the limit.
Windows Azure and SQL Azure provide an opportunity to host applications on
Microsoft computing infrastructure while using a host of developer services to
build applications. It supports an extensive selection of proprietary development
tools and protocols including Live Services, Microsoft .NET services, Microsoft
SQL services, Microsoft SharePoint services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM ser-
vices. There is also opportunity to interface with non-Microsoft technologies using
support for web API’s such as SOAP and REST [11].
Other Cloud computing services providers includes Salesforce.com, IBM and
EMC. However, these are not as prominent as the three already discussed above.

4.2.2 Cloud Technology Adoption

Adoption according to [20] can be defined as ‘‘the acceptance and continued use of
a product, service or an idea’’. Despite the much talked about prospects of Cloud
technology and the potential that the innovation offers for IT commercialization,
several potential cloud users are in fact yet to opt for the solution [21].
According to Chow et al. [21], even most of the organizations that have
implemented the solution have only just tested the waters in managing to put non
business critical application on the cloud. This is largely due to the fact that they
do not completely trust the solution as yet. This position was supported by Kim
[22] that Cloud computing still has lots of issues that are preventing its adoption by
majority of users. He mentioned compliance as a peculiar challenge for corporate
organizations. However, a Cloud technology adoption survey carried out by
Mimecast in 2009 to examine the perception and adoption of Cloud computing
solutions among 565 respondents across US and Canada seems to confirm an
interesting position [23]. According to this survey, 60 % of respondents seem to
favor adoption of the solution, with 70 % of those already using the solution
intending to further move additional applications to the cloud. This obviously
indicates that those organizations feel they are realizing appropriate benefit from
the implementation of this solution.
On the contrary, another research work by Behrend et al. [24] seem to confirm
that adoption of the Cloud idea is still plagued with inherent issues that needs
addressing before users can find the innovation comfortable to use. The research
work investigated the adoption and usage of the Cloud by a community college in
south eastern USA comprising of approximately 750 students. It further explained
that Cloud computing is like any other IT initiative and its adoption is plagued by
technical factors of the solution, characteristics of the organization that introduces
the solution and the response of individuals within the establishment to the new
tools introduced by the solution.
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 83

Yet, others like Greenwood et al. [25] believe that it is highly unlikely that any
organization will totally host all its applications on the cloud. They believe that most
environments of organizations that adopt Cloud computing will be heterogeneous—
consisting of some applications hosted in the Cloud (possibly more than one cloud
providers) and other hosted on dedicated servers within the organizations.
A number of factors have been reviewed by several authors and writers to affect
the adoption of Cloud technology, some inhibiting the adoption rate and yet others
serving as a motivation.

Cost
One such proposed factor that has been considered to affect Cloud adoption is
the cost. According to Skilton [26], Cloud computing is able to help business and
drive cost savings by helping an organization to ‘‘avoid the cost of over-provi-
sioning and under-provisioning’’ of computing resources. Of course this is sup-
posed to be in addition to the business advantages enabled by low entry cost since
the organization will not have to invest in buying IT assets. Khajeh-Hosseini et al.
[27] also stated that one of the reason consumers move to the cloud is for lower IT
support costs.
This position is also supported by the research work of Khajeh-Hosseini [28]
while looking at the migration of an Enterprise IT to IaaS. They discovered that
moving to the cloud has clear financial benefits to the organization to the tune of
almost 37 %.
However, Leavitt [29] thinks that while it is indeed possible that organizations
save money on equipment and software, such money may be offset by investment
on bandwidth, which is a critical cloud operation dependency, especially if large
data is concerned. Kondo et al. [30] in his research work also seems to think that
Cloud computing is effective only for small and medium sized applications, but
that for large projects; the costs are simply too much. In fact, Misra and Mondal
[31] confirmed that opinions on opportunities for cost savings in quite divergent on
many blogs with one group confirming that the solution is economically profitable
while others are saying is quite more expensive.

Security
Security is another major factor that has been said to affect Cloud adoption [21].
According to them, this is the major reason why potential cloud users have not
joined the cloud, and those that have, are just testing the waters with non-sensitive
business data. This position was also supported by the cloud services user survey
carried out by IDC exchange [32], which listed security concerns as the number
one major issue. The concerns here include the privacy of the hosted data and
whether the cloud provider will be able to provide the relevant level of audit
needed by the organization. With their data out of their control, it says most
organizations worry if they are not more vulnerable to attackers.
On the contrary, Alecu [33] believed that implementing Cloud technology has
obvious advantages to an organization. Cloud providers are better able to effec-
tively manage and use available resources to better secure data in their premises
84 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

than a single organization would. They are for example able to provide centralized
data storage, adequate monitoring of data access and adequate logging. Grossman
[34] supported this claim by saying that the economy of scale with which most
Cloud computing operates gives them the necessary resources to implement
adequate security. Assuncao et al. [35] also said that Cloud computing being based
on a virtualized technology offers increased security through creation sandboxes
for running applications with unquestionable reliability. According to Youseff
et al. [36] however, security is still a major issue that Cloud computing users
would have to contend with before a decision to move to the cloud.

Availability
Another factor with potential to affect Cloud adoption is system availability [36]
Availability as used here covers reliability issues, latency issues and performance
issues. According to Youseff et al. [36], outage is one problem that users and cloud
providers will have to battle with in the light of possible network outage and system
failures. The effect of this is actually managed by putting an appropriate Service
Level Agreement (SLA) in place between the users and the providers. Kim et al.
[22] also pointed out that outages may be permanent or temporary, with a per-
manent outage implying that a company has gone out of business. This has hap-
pened before and is inevitable. Kim believes that a company should exercise
discretion in the data they put on the cloud and should endeavor to make backups.
Harish and Dhanasehar [37] agreed with this stating that an organization that
decides to move to the cloud will have no option but to totally trust on the
availability offered by the cloud provider. The only way this trust can be earned is
for a cloud provider to standardize their SLA. Clouds have also been said to suffer
from a high level availability which Vaquero et al. [38] believes is as a result of the
lower level of maturity of the paradigm.
However, Youseff et al. [36] did not fail to quickly point out that even though
availability issue is not uncommon with cloud, most cloud infrastructures are built
to provider high availability guarantees. A user can even drastically increase this
by blending a mix of cloud offerings i.e., combining a Google app engine with an
Amazon s3 service.

User awareness
User awareness and education is also another factor that has been noted to affect
Technology usage, and indeed Cloud adoption. According to Rogers and Shoe-
maker [39], the acceptance or rejection of a technological innovation actually
begins when users become aware of that product or innovation. In an independent
research work carried out by Sathye [20] to discover factors affecting the adoption
of Internet banking as a technology innovation, he discovered that user awareness
of the product and the benefit it offers play a major role in users deciding whether
or not to adopt the solution.
If users are not keen to adopting the Cloud as a solution, it may be perhaps
because they are not aware of the solution or the benefit that adopting the solution
has to offer. This position was also supported by the work of Beloglazov et al. [40]
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 85

that user awareness is one factor that cannot be ignored when it comes to usage of
Information technology and innovations like the Cloud. The more aware users are
of Cloud computing and its benefits, the more inclined they are to use the resources.

Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness

Another well acclaimed factor that affects adoption of technological innova-
tions and can well affect adoption of Cloud technology is the perceived ease of use
and the perceived usefulness of the innovation. This theory was first pioneered by
the research work of Davis [4] and has been confirmed by several other researches.
He defined perceived ease of use as the extent to which the use of a particular
product is believed to be free of effort and perceived usefulness as the degree of
the belief that a particular tool or product will enhance the performance of a job. In
a different research work by Grandon and Pearson [41], these factors were also
established to have significant effect on the adoption of Electronic commerce.
A research work by Fenech [42] on the other hand did not seem to confirm that
the two factors have a direct influence on the rate of adoption of the World Wide
Web. He indicated that computer self-efficacy on the other hand seems to be a
major determinant for the adoption. Self-efficacy, according to Marakas et al. [43]
cited in Yi and Hwang [44] defined computer efficacy as an individual’s judgement
of his efficiency to adequately use the computer hardware and the applications that
are installed on the device to achieve set objectives. Nonetheless, the research
work of Behrend et al. [24] seems to unequivocally confirm that these two factors
play a major role in Cloud adoption and usage in community colleges.

Compliance
Compliance is another major issue faced by organizations moving to the Cloud
[45] and therefore has a great potential to affect adoption rate. According to
Subashini and Kavitha [45], this is because most customers may not have control
over where their data is actually located and hence fear falling short of regulatory
and data privacy laws. As an example, certain data types are not allowed to leave
the countries in many EU and American countries. Most enterprises in the US are
bound by regulations concerning storage, disclosure and privacy of data. This for
example includes Serbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA [22]. According to Kim et al.
[22], Consumers need to comply with these regulations even in their use of Cloud
computing.
Supporting this argument, Chow et al. [21] reiterated that while the legal con-
sequence of application and data hosting in the cloud is still far from being clearly
understood, there is obvious ‘‘potential lack of control and transparency when a
third party holds the data’’. This, according to them is affecting organizations’
desire to move to public clouds. Most of them rather prefer to build private Clouds
for themselves so that they can still partake of the benefits of the solution.

Vendor lock-in
Vendor/data lock-in has also been regarded as a factor that affects adoption of
Cloud technology [46, 47]. Software stack has increased interoperability among
86 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

platforms, but the API used in Cloud computing is still essentially proprietary and
so difficulty exists for an organization to extract out its data should a reason
demand so. As more cloud providers emerge, portability (ability to extract data) is
increasingly becoming a more important criterion [29]. As it is, if an organization
is not happy with the services of a provider, they cannot easily and inexpensively
transfer a service to another provider or copy data back to in-house. A rework or
reformat of the data is usually necessary. While this position is welcome to cloud
providers, it is a menace to consumers. Armbrust et al. [1] also criticized this
situation proposing that the solution is to standardize the APIs that are used by
Cloud computing providers.

4.3 Survey

The qualitative research work for this chapter was carried out using a survey.
Surveys are quite widely used and can generate large quantity of standardized data
and information for quantitative study and hypothesis testing. Surveys use
methodical sampling questionnaires to measure the characteristics of the popula-
tion with statistical precision [48].
The online version of questionnaire is the chosen form of survey used in this
research work to collect the data used for analysis. It has the advantage of; being
inexpensive, not requiring too much interviewing time, easy to analyze and also
allowing respondents to maintain their secrecy to deeply consider their response.
On the downside, response rate can be low and it may take quite a while to get
reasonable number of responses.

4.3.1 Questionnaire Design

Based on the literature review focused on the factors affecting Cloud technology
adoption, a questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire consisted of three parts;
organization, Cloud computing questions and demographics. Before the final copy
was agreed, draft copies were circulated to a couple of known experts in the field
of Cloud technology as recommended by Rattray [49]. Their recommendations and
input were taken into consideration to ensure that the questions asked were rele-
vant. The questions were also sufficiently reviewed to ensure that it is clearly
worded and not biased or leading in any shape or form. Best practices such as;
asking easier questions first, grouping similar questions and avoiding use of
abbreviations were also adhered to. While two questions were single item
response, a number of the questions were multi-item scales to avoid bias, misin-
terpretation and reduce measurement error [50].
Likert-type questions account for majority of the questions and have been
considered to be a relatively easy, efficient and appropriate method to use [49]. A
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 87

free text response was also provided in a section to encourage richer data gathering
by allowing respondents to provide alternatives to options provided. A copy of the
questionnaire is shown in the Appendix.

4.3.2 Questionnaire Hosting

After design, the questionnaire was hosted on the World Wide Web so that it can
be easily accessible to respondents using internet access. As the popularity of
internet increases and the cost of computer hardware and software decreases,
internet is becoming a fruitful area for conducting survey research [51]. Apart
from the obvious advantages of cost and time savings, online surveys provide
access to group of unique individuals which otherwise would be difficult to reach.
The online vehicle used to deliver the survey is Google Docs application. Google
Docs is robust, free and allows data to be extracted into excel formats for different
kind of analysis. There is no restriction on the number of respondents that can fill
the survey, as compared to some other free survey tools. It also rides on Google’s
time tested infrastructure to provide adequate reliability in speed of access.

4.3.3 Questionnaire Circulation

After been made available online, the questionnaire link was then forwarded
randomly to some 200 professionals in various organizations across the United
Kingdom. In order to also increase the sampling frame, the link to the surveys was
also posted to some selected Cloud forums. Care was taken to ensure that orga-
nizations of varying sizes were represented in the list of respondents selected so
that results are not skewed in a particular direction.
It should be noted however, that because only the opinions of professionals are
required, the survey was restricted to these groups of people. Respondents were
also encouraged to help forward to other professionals that are known to them.
Support was provided in form of emails assistance to people who had any difficulty
with filling the survey.

4.3.4 Results Collection

At the end of the survey (which lasted about 10 days), the resulting information
and data were extracted from the hosting location to a Microsoft excel format to be
imported and analyzed with the Statistical package for Social Sciences (SPSS)
V17 software. The resulted data were also pruned and styled to make it more
presentable and compatible with the SPSS software used for the analysis. Care was
taken not to modify any statistical data in the process.
88 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

4.4 Analysis and Discussion

4.4.1 Analysis

Of the estimated 200 professionals contacted to fill the survey, only 47 actually
filled the survey forms. This represents a response rate of about 23.5 %. Data
from the responses were then collected, verified for consistency and analyzed
with SPSS Version 17. All the questionnaires were correctly filled and were
considered valid.

4.4.1.1 Organization

The first part of the questionnaire focused on the profile of organizations repre-
sented in the survey. Small sized organizations represented 19 % of the survey
response (13 % micro, and 6 % small) while just 4 % represented medium sized
organizations. Large enterprises were most represented in the sample with a value
of 77 %. Also, of the total number of respondents, only 14.9 % have no input to
the kind of solution their organization adopts. 19.1 % are decision makers while
36.2 % recommend solutions to decision makers. A further 29.8 % have at least an
input into the solution that their organization adopts. We could conclude that all
categories of professionals were adequately represented by the survey. These data
are represented in Fig. 4.1 (Table 4.1).

4.4.1.2 Demographics

The last part of the survey covered the demographics of the respondent. Majority
of the respondents have work experience falling in the ranges 6–12 and
13–20 years represented by 37 and 28.3 % respectively. 23.9 % have experience
ranged 21–30 while only 4.3 % have over 30 years work experience. Majority of
the respondents fell between the ages 26–35 and 36–45 with 41 and 43 %
respectively (Table 4.2).

Fig. 4.1 Size of

organizations represented
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 89

Table 4.1 Distribution of Position Frequency Percentage

positions in the organization
I am a decision maker 9 19.1
I recommend solutions 17 36.2
to decision makers
I have input to choice 14 29.8
of solution adopted
I have no input in choice 7 14.9
of solution adopted
Total 47 100.0

Table 4.2 Work experience Years Frequency Percentage

0–5 3 6.4
6–12 18 38.3
13–20 13 27.7
21–30 11 23.4
Over 30 2 4.3
Total 47 100.0

4.4.1.3 Cloud Technology Questions

According to the survey, a decisive 91 % said they will recommend Cloud tech-
nology to organizations. However, they differ on the type of Cloud option they
would recommend. 52.8 % said they would recommend hybrid Cloud to organi-
zations while a close 42.86 % decided to opt for private Clouds. Only 4.76 %
decided in favor of public Cloud.

4.4.1.4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption

User education and awareness

Analysis of the survey shows that all the respondents admitted to having heard
about Cloud technology. This interesting result is also buttressed by the fact that
91 % of respondents regard themselves as at least somewhat familiar with the
technology. As can be seen from the table, only 8.5 % consider themselves not to
be familiar with the technology despite having heard about it. For the purpose of
analysis, representing the various likert scales with continuous numbers (1 = not
familiar, 2 = somewhat familiar, 3 = very familiar and 4 = expert), the mean of
the distribution is 2.49 which can be considered close to the value 2 representing
‘‘somewhat familiar’’.

Service availability
At first glance, it was easily observed that a lot of respondents could not make
out how service availability is affected by moving services to the cloud. This is
easily inferred from the 46.8 % of respondents that neither agreed nor disagreed
90 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

Table 4.3 Familiarity with Familiarity Frequency Percentage

cloud technology
Not familiar 4 8.5
Somewhat familiar 18 38.3
Very familiar 23 48.9
Expert 2 4.3
Total 47 100.0

Table 4.4 Service Service availability Frequency Percentage

availability
Strongly disagree 1 2.1
Disagree 14 29.8
Neither agree nor disagree 22 46.8
Agree 8 17.0
Strongly agree 2 4.3
Total 47 100.0

Table 4.5 Vendor lock-in Vendor lock-in issues Frequency Percentage

issues
Strongly disagree 1 2.1
Disagree 5 10.6
Neither agree nor disagree 7 14.9
Agree 28 59.6
Strongly agree 6 12.8
Total 47 100.0

with the statement ‘‘organizations that move to the cloud are more likely to
experience service availability issues’’. 29.8 % disagreed with the statement while
17 % agreed. Using continuous numbers to represent the various likert scales (i.e.,
1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree), the mean value of 2.91 which is
very close to the value 3 (neither agree nor disagree) confirmed the earlier state-
ment (Tables 4.3 and 4.4).

Vendor lock-in
Analysis of the survey response confirmed that most respondents think that
changing Cloud provider is an issue if an organization decides to go with Cloud
technology. This is confirmed by the fact that a decisive 61 % of respondents agree
with this statement. Only 11 % of respondent disagreed with the statement. Fol-
lowing the same representation as above, the mean value is 3.97 which is close to 4
(Agree) (Table 4.5).

Ease of use
The result of this survey confirmed that most respondents think that Cloud
technology will be easy enough to learn and use. This was confirmed by 53.2 % of
people disagreeing with the statement ‘‘Cloud technology will be difficult to learn
and use’’. Interestingly, about 27.7 % neither agree nor disagree with the
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 91

Table 4.6 Ease of use Ease of use Frequency Percentage

Strongly disagree 1 2.1
Disagree 25 53.2
Neither agree nor disagree 13 27.7
Agree 6 12.8
Strongly agree 2 4.3
Total 47 100.0

Table 4.7 Perceived Perceived usefulness Frequency Percentage

usefulness
Strongly disagree 3 6.4
Disagree 16 34.0
Neither agree nor disagree 12 25.5
Agree 13 27.7
Strongly agree 3 6.4
Total 47 100.0

statement. Representing the likert scales with numbers for analysis however, the
mean is 2.61. This value is a little close to 3, which will suggest that even though
the majority think Cloud technology will be easy to learn and use, the opinion can
be considered quite close to neither agree or disagree (Table 4.6).

Perceived usefulness
While more people think that Cloud technology will enhance their productivity
at their place of work (represented by the 34 % who disagree with the survey
question), the statistics is not particularly skewed in any direction. In fact, a very
close figure (27.7 %) agreed with the survey question. Representing the likert
scales with numbers as usual and calculating the mean gives a value of 2.94 which
is very close to 3 (representing Neither agree nor disagree) (Table 4.7).

Security
Analysis of responses show that majority of people agree that security exposure is
an issue for an organization that moves to Cloud technology judging by the 68.1 %
of people who at least agreed with the survey statement (42.6 % strongly agree and
25.5 % agree). This by far is the largest single value for strongly agree, showing that
a number of people seems certain about this. Following the normal procedure of
representing the likert scales with values from 1 to 5 to calculate the mean reveals a
value of 3.87 which as expected is close to 4 (representing agree) (Table 4.8).

Compliance
Compliance is another area that seems respondents are sure is an area of issue
with Cloud technology. 63.8 % of respondents seem to believe that there is danger
of running afoul of compliance laws when moving services to the cloud. This
contrasts with just 18 % who disagreed. As expected, the mean value is close to 4,
an actual value of 3.72 suggesting that the average decision is that of agreement
with the survey statement (Table 4.9).
92 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

Table 4.8 Security issues Security issues Frequency Percentage

Strongly disagree 4 8.5
Disagree 3 6.4
Neither agree nor disagree 8 17.0
Agree 12 25.5
Strongly agree 20 42.6
Total 47 100.0

Table 4.9 Security issues Security issues Frequency Percentage

Strongly disagree 1 2.1
Disagree 6 12.8
Neither agree nor disagree 10 21.3
Agree 18 38.3
Strongly agree 12 25.5
Total 47 100.0

Cost
It, however, seems a majority of the respondents are not exactly sure of the cost
implications of Cloud technology and whether or not the solution will result in any
cost savings. This is made evident by the fact that 46.8 % of the respondent neither
agree nor disagree with the survey statement that ‘‘cost of Cloud computing can be
prohibitive’’. 21.3 % disagree with the statement while 23.4 % agree. The mean
value of 3.04 is rather close to 3 (Neither agree nor disagree) confirming the
observation.

4.4.2 Further Analysis

An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was carried out to see if there is any
relationship between people’s position in the organization and the various factors
suggested to affect Cloud technology adoption. The resulting table is shown in the
appendix. The analysis did show that position in organization do have statistical
difference on familiarity with Cloud technology [F(3,47), p = 0.01] although the
same cannot be said for others. Those who recommend solution are more familiar
with Cloud computing (Mean = 3.00) than those who make input (Mean = 2.21)
and those who make no input (Mean = 2.00) (Table 4.10).
To further analyze the pattern displayed here, a test called post hoc analysis was
carried out. The test helps in finding patterns between variables that would
otherwise remain detected. The type of post hoc test carried out was called Scheffe
test (Table 4.1). This test showed that people who recommend solutions to deci-
sion makers are statistically different from those who have input and those who
have no input to choice of solutions adopted. The size of variability predicted is
31.11 % (g2 = 31.11).
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 93

Table 4.10 Cost issues Cost issues Frequency Percentage

Strongly disagree 2 4.3
Disagree 10 21.3
Neither agree nor disagree 22 46.8
Agree 11 23.4
Strongly agree 2 4.3
Total 47 100.0

Fig. 4.2 The three top

factors identified

The ANOVA test carried out to see if respondent’s age range and years of work
experience have a relationship with any of the factors did not yield any statistically
significant result.
Also, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient [52] was used to verify if there is
any relationship between the factors affecting Cloud technology. The result is
shown in the appendix. Most of the data at best only show very weak relationship,
with the best being the relationship between ease of use and perceived productivity
(r = 0.393(47), p (two-tailed) \ 0.05).
Figure 4.2 shows the bar chart for the three top factors that have been identified
by respondents to consider when adopting Cloud technology. As can be seen from
the chart, Security is the number one issue that respondents consider top priority.
This is closely followed by availability of service and cost.

4.4.3 Discussion

This research work has established the factors considered by United Kingdom
professionals to affect Cloud technology adoption. Generally speaking, the overall
consensus of these professionals is that even though there are some challenges that
still plague Cloud adoption, they will recommend it to organizations. This decision
cuts across the various categories of professionals that exist in organizations (from
decision makers to those who have no input to decisions) and could signify that
challenges are not unexpected of a rather new innovation like Cloud computing.
94 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

Table 4.11 Post-hoc Scheffe test of familiarity with cloud technology and position
Position in organization N Subset for alpha = 0.05
1 2
I have no input in choice of solution adopted 7 2.00
I have input to choice of solution adopted 14 2.21 2.21
I am a decision maker 9 2.33 2.33
I recommend solutions to decision makers 17 3.00
Sig. 0.680 0.050
Means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed
Uses Harmonic Mean Sample Size = 10.411

However, the type of Cloud technology preferred is the private Cloud or hybrid
Cloud. This suggests that a number of people still feel more comfortable with
having a big measure of control over their applications and services. This is even
clearer as the overwhelming majority believed that security is a serious issue and is
therefore a major factor that an organization would have to consider before
moving its services to the cloud. This is in perfect agreement with the research
work of Chow et al. [21]. Closely related to the issue of security is compliance
with regulatory authorities. Clearly this is also another big worry for most pro-
fessionals and is a big factor that needs to be addressed before an organization
thinks of adopting Cloud technology. There can be dire consequences for orga-
nizations that find itself on the wrong side of the law (Table 4.11).
Perhaps one thing that has encouraged many people to look favorably on the
adoption of Cloud technology is that an average professional is at least somewhat
familiar with it and perhaps see it as the next phase of IT. As such, awareness and
education is not really an issue with Cloud technology adoption. Interestingly,
according to the research, people who recommend solutions are more familiar with
the technology than all other categories. This is quite expected as such people
often times are more knowledgeable about technologies as they often need to be
able to defend their recommendations to managers. Conversely, people who make
no input to decisions know the least about Cloud technology. In the same vein,
learning and using Cloud technology will not be an issue according to the research.
It may be that most people believe that its use would not be that different from the
regular internet use they have become quite familiar with. To strongly support this,
a lot of users now get the option to work flexibly from various locations and
connect to applications located in their office. Perhaps Cloud use should not be any
different from this.
It is a surprise though that even though Cloud technology is perceived to be
easy to learn and to use, the average opinion on perceived usefulness is that of
indifference. Clearly people do not have a clear understanding of how the use of
Cloud technology can enhance their productivity at work and in fact whether it
even will. This should be taken into consideration by an organization before
deciding on compelling their employees to start using it. It is interesting to note
though that a number of people think that Cloud technology will be easy to learn
4 Factors Affecting Cloud Technology Adoption 95

also think it will be quite useful to them. However, this relationship is quite weak
and should not in any way be taken as the general opinion.
Another clear factor that has been established to affect Cloud technology
adoption according to the research is vendor lock-in. The average opinion
expressed is that moving into Cloud technology will be quite difficult if an
organization does decide to opt for it. This opinion conforms largely to that of
most writers and experts of Cloud technology who believe that there is no stan-
dardization in the programming interface used by Cloud providers [1, 29]. Hence
organizations moving to the Cloud should ensure that they are aware of and make
provisions for this.
The opinion on cost and service availability is quite similar to that of perceived
productivity. The average opinion is that of uncertainty. Indeed most people are
not sure if implementing Cloud will bring about any cost savings or even end up
being more expensive. The same goes for availability. There is no clarity of
whether opting for Cloud will improve or lower service availability. This is not too
strange considering that even among the experts the opinion is quite divergent.
These are huge areas that an organization should look into before dabbling into
Cloud.
One interesting feedback from the survey is that ensuring a valid business case
for Cloud technology adoption could be a potential factor worth considering.
Security has been deemed the most important factor that affects Cloud adoption,
according to this research work. This is by no means a surprise. As hackers and
attackers get more skilled and proficient in getting unauthorized access to appli-
cations and services, there is increased awareness of security. To host applications
in the Cloud is to give away the sense of being responsible for the security of one’s
applications and services and is clearly not where most people want to be. As
stated earlier, it explains why the choice of Cloud is largely private Cloud or at the
most retaining sensitive data in-house and hosting non sensitive ones with Cloud
providers (hybrid). The second and third most important factor highlighted is
availability of service and cost respectively. These perhaps are considered quite
important because of their sensitivity to the success of a business and the fact that
most people are still not sure how the Cloud affects them.
This research work makes a necessary contribution. Even though a number of
factors have been suspected to affect Cloud technology adoption, this study
actually goes ahead to confirm which of these factors do actually need to be well
considered when planning on moving applications to the Cloud.

4.5 Conclusions and Future Research

Cloud technology can be beneficial to an organization [1]. However, the organi-

zation needs to be aware of the challenges and factors like security, compliance,
vendor lock-in, cost and service availability that can impede enjoying its benefit.
These factors have to be clearly prepared for so an organization can continue to
96 N. A. Ogunde and J. Mehnen

keep its cutting edge. Most professionals are already somewhat familiar with
Cloud technology and believe that the technology will be easy to learn and use.
They are also happy to recommend it to their organizations.
This research has some limitations that need to be highlighted. Firstly, the
number of sample involved in this research is quite small compared to the working
professionals in the United Kingdom. With more time and resources, the research
work can be taken to a higher level. This is an area of further research.
Secondly, the research focuses only on the working professionals in the United
Kingdom. It could be interesting, for example, to validate this result in another
location, e.g., the United States. In addition, these factors need to be tested among
a different category e.g., students who may be more technologically savvy than
working professionals. This is also an area of future research.

Acknowledgments This research was carried out as a part of the CASES project which is
supported by a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the
7th European Community Framework Programme under the grant agreement No 294931. The
chapter reflects only the authors’ views and the Union is not liable for any use that may be made
of the information contained therein.

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Chapter 5
Manufacturing Paradigm Shift
Towards Better Sustainability

Z. M. Bi and Lihui Wang

Abstract A system paradigm is an abstract representation of the system; it is the

system architecture that determines the types and numbers of the components and
their relations in operation and interaction of the system. Its selection relies on
customers’ requirements and manufacturing environment. Many system paradigms
have been proposed. However, most of them are based on an assumption that the
life-cycle and boundary of a system can be defined based on the customers’
requirements. Since sustainability becomes essential to today’s manufacturing
systems, a new concern is how to evolve existing paradigms to meet new chal-
lenges. The objectives of this chapter are, therefore, to examine the manufacturing
requirements in a wider scope, to revisit existing paradigms to clarify the limi-
tations and bottlenecks, and eventually to identify future research directions
towards sustainable manufacturing. Within the context, this chapter focuses more
on Reconfigurable and Cloud manufacturing system paradigms, and highlights the
future endeavors towards better sustainability.

Z. M. Bi (&)
Department of Engineering, Indiana University Purdue University
Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN 46805, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
L. Wang
Department of Production Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology,
100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]

W. Li and J. Mehnen (eds.), Cloud Manufacturing, Springer Series 99

in Advanced Manufacturing, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-4935-4_5,
 Springer-Verlag London 2013