Communications - September 2012

model Deployment

In the hypothesized relationships in cloud deployment, success depends on positive linkages with the client organization’s technical, managerial, and relational capabilities (see Figure 5). Our survey of organizations adopting cloud computing was a test of the cloud-deployment model (see Table 1). We collected a total of 314 usable questionnaires based on on-site interviews, online participation, and telephone interviews. Participants, mainly IT managers, provided subjective evaluations of their relationship with cloud vendors, including the vendor’s technical ability (such as speed of integration), managerial ability (such as to exploit emerging technologies), 15 the affective dimension of trust (such as fairness and trustworthiness), 19 and the cognitive dimension of trust (such as service reliability). 9 We also asked participants for their perceptions of their deployments (such as “meets business needs” and “produces timely information”) 7 and verified all survey items met the requisite tests for reliability, internal consistency, and validity. We tested the structural-equations model using AMOS 7.0 analytical software, finding the model-fit indices in Figure 5 all meet the standard thresholds for acceptability of the fit of the data to the model (see Table 2).

ganization/cloud-vendor relationship cannot be overstated when organizations move to cloud services. Trust is a strong predictor of deployment success and key factor in effective collaboration and assurance that the client organization’s cloud strategy is implemented in its best interests.

Moreover, when the client orga-
nization is characterized by strong
technical and managerial capability,
it is more likely to achieve greater IT
economies of scale, as well as greater
access to skilled IT personnel and key
technologies. The three factors mod-
eled as influential in the organization
reaching its cloud-computing poten-
tial explain a large percentage (49%) of

table 1. Survey-respondent demographics and cloud use.

Industry It Manufacturing Finance Logistics Service education

Frequency 75 63 52 46 44 27

% 23.7% 19.9% 16.4% 14.5% 13.9% 8.5%

Location
Asia
North America
europe
Australia
Africa
other

92

81

79

34

17

14

29.0% 25.6% 24.9% 10.7% 5.4% 4.4%

Cloud Services Used Saa S Iaa S paa S

134

117

66

42.3% 36.9% 20.8%

model Results

We found that trust, managerial capability, and technical capability each have a significant relationship with cloud-deployment performance. The results of the user-vendor partnership imply that when a client organization and its cloud vendor develop a relationship characterized by trust, the client is more likely to realize the technical and economic benefits for which it originally pursued cloud computing. The importance of trust in the client-or-