Department of Information Systems

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Browsing Department of Information Systems by Author "Introna, Nicolette"

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    A cloud computing adoption framework for financial service institutions in South Africa
    (University of Fort Hare, 2015) Introna, Nicolette
    Financial service providers in South Africa are failing to leverage the benefits that cloud computing could contribute to their business and clients. The primary objectives of cloud computing include reducing overall Information Technology (IT) service costs and processing time whilst increasing process throughput, reliability, availability and flexibility. However, despite these advantages, both strategically and operationally, there is still a relatively slow adoption rate. This can be attributed to the potential pitfalls of the technology such as security concerns, failure downtime resulting from server maintenance or unforeseen outages, implementation complexity and compatibility issues. Very few migration readiness assessment strategies exist, and those that do exist are focused at a much higher level of abstraction. No framework exists within which financial service providers can assess the feasibility or readiness of their unique financial services for cloud computing. The development and demand for cloud industry standards (including the assessment of service readiness) is the foremost concern of IT decision makers. This research project examines ways in which South African financial service providers are able to increase the rate of adoption of cloud computing services. To achieve this financial service providers require a means to increase adoption level of cloud computing. The contribution of this research project is a framework based on the Technology Organisation Environment Framework (TOE) that medium-sized financial organisations can make use of in order to assess the feasibility of their financial services for the adoption of cloud computing. The research project applies design science to produce an extensive framework which financial services organisations can use to evaluate their readiness for the adoption of cloud computing. The findings of the research suggest that there is strong interest from employees within financial services organisations to explore cloud computing as a means to improve the value they are already able to offer clients.