Technical and Environmental Factors Affecting Cloud Computing Adoption in the South African Public Sector

Cloud computing can bring many benefits to organisations and countries. However there are technical and environmental factors that could hinder the adoption of these technologies in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of these factors in the public sector in developing countries such as South Africa. A detailed literature review revealed several factors to cloud computing adoption and these were empirically validated using a survey approach. Fifty one respondents from forty public sector organisations in South Africa completed the survey. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents showed concern regarding the availability and privacy of data. The environmental factors that were of the most importance to respondents were adoption strategies of cloud computing implementations as well as the provision of usage guidelines and regulatory requirements in organisations.