The influence of dependability in cloud computing adoption

Cloud computing (CC) has many benefits, so its use has spread rapidly, particularly in the business sector. An important consideration in the acceptance of CC is whether the CC system is dependable, and it can differ among industry and service type. However, little research has considered the effect of dependability (composed of availability, reliability, security, maintainability) on CC acceptance. Especially, group comparisons between high IT-intensive (Hi-ITi) and low IT-intensive (Lo-ITi) industries have not been reported, nor have comparisons between software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS)/infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This study aims to explore how the dependability of CC affects users’ intent to accept it, with focus on how this intent is affected by intensity of IT use (by industry) and by the type of CC service used. To validate the proposed model, this study applied structural equation modeling and conducted multi-group analysis. A total of 230 business managers in South Korea represent the sample for our study. For the full dataset, the three dependability attributes (availability, reliability, security) do not affect the usefulness of CC, but do affect the ease of use of CC. The usefulness of CC is a determinant for positive intention to accept CC, whereas the ease of use of CC is not. Maintainability is the strongest determinant of CC adoption for the full dataset, and for all individual groups, except those that use SaaS. For Hi-ITi and Lo-ITi industries, results show that managers show no differences in their perceptions of the effect of dependability attributes (availability, reliability, security) on the usefulness and the ease of CC. The absence of such a difference in managers’ perception also applies to the relationship between two core variables of TAM (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use) and behavioral intention to accept CC. For SaaS and PaaS/IaaS, managers have different perceptions of security on the usefulness of CC, and the effect of the usefulness of CC on the intention to accept CC. The findings can provide academic researchers and industry practitioners with a differentiated and in-depth perspective on the understanding and the spread of CC.