Strategic cloud computing framework in the context of South African information technology professionals

Abstract

South African organisations are faced with the challenge of rising costs for deploying and maintaining information technology infrastructure, platforms, and software’s. With the introduction of cloud computing, organisations can now shift from investing internally in information technology resources into where resources are consumed, doing this via the Internet. The business leadership research problem is that individuals and organizations often lack the know what and know how of cloud computing. This is because the existing frameworks are not always applicable to certain South African contexts. To address this problem, the present study sought to explore and describe how cloud computing could be strategically adopted and used. This is done through the views and perspectives of South African information technology professionals. Cloud computing organisational adoption and use may be well studied in the literature but there are no known studies, which address the adoption and use from the individual IT, professionals’ point of view. This has left some knowledge gaps, which the present study sought to address. The Technology-organization-environment framework, the Contingency theory and the Stakeholder theory were adopted as the research lenses to empirically understand and subsequently determine how cloud computing may be strategically adopted and used, from the IT professional's perspective. The study followed an interpretive philosophy stance and adopted a qualitative research approach and a case study strategy involving semi-structured interviews with purposively selected IT professionals as participants. The theoretical, practical, methodological and contextual contributions of the thesis are in the strategic cloud computing framework for South African organizations. This framework shows the theoretical and practical elements necessary for the improved adoption and use of cloud computing, from the IT professional's perspective.