The Adoption of Cloud Computing amongst Micro-Enterprises

Micro-enterprises have been generally recognized as a bedrock of innovation and industrial development in many countries given their cumulative contribution to countries' Gross Domestic product (GDP). However, despite their significance and importance to economic development, micro-enterprises across the world, including South Africa, are still facing numerous challenges, difficulties, and obstacles. South Africa is one of the countries with the lowest small business survival rates in the world and thus there is a pressing need to find new and innovative approaches which assist this sector to become more productive and effective. Although large and medium enterprises are generally able to harness ICTs, the literature provides evidence of the difficulty of the small and micro-enterprise sector in effectively adopting ICT in their business. In the internet era businesses of all sizes have a multitude of opportunities to embed ICTs within their operations. However even though governments are investing heavily in infrastructure to avail broadband internet to their citizenry, micro-enterprises especially have not been able to effectively harness the benefits of the internet. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to make a contribution to growing frame of research on ICT adoption amongst survivalist enterprises by investigating the factors influencing the adoption of cloud computing in this sector of business. This study uses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model as a theoretical lens, to investigate the main research question in this qualitative exploratory study. Primary data was collected using semistructured interviews amongst four selected cases of micro-enterprises. The findings provide insight into the behavioural intention of the participants towards the adoption of cloud computing. The results indicate that the most critical factors influencing the adoption of cloud computing are cloud education (Awareness, Technical knowledge, Enlightenment) and cloud security which include (Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality). Moreover, it was found that among the four dimensions of the UTAUT framework, performance expectancy is most important, followed by effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. A fourth dimension, social influence, was found not to be relevant within this problem domain.