Cloud Cmputing Adoption in Taiwan: an Empirical Study

Cloud computing is a new information technology (IT) paradigm that revolutionizes traditional IT provisioning with its cost-reducing, elastic provisioning, and ubiquitous access features. With that promising propaganda, more and more firms are planning to adopt cloud services. Therefore, a thorough understanding of cloud computing adoption from a firm’s point of view is very important. Although there is abundant exploratory or descriptive literature discussing the drivers and barriers of cloud computing adoption, there are very few empirical studies using large-scale data to validate these antecedents. Moreover, an integrated framework with theoretical foundation to evaluate whether a firm should step into cloud is lacking in the current literature. To bridge this gap, our study uses the technology organization environment (TOE) framework in innovation diffusion theory to develop a cloud service adoption model. Our research model is empirically tested using 200 Taiwanese firms. We found that (1) cloud adoption in Taiwan is still at its initial stage since the adoption rate is very low (SaaS adoption rate=30%; PaaS adoption rate=5%; IaaS adoption rate=13%). (2) The perceived benefits, business concerns, and IT capability within the TOE framework are significant determinants of cloud computing adoption, while external pressure is not a significant predictor, in contrast to our hypothesis. We explain the phenomena using the innovation diffusion curve viewpoint: at this early stage, current cloud adopters are adventurous innovators who love to lead the trend instead of being led or forced by others.