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Top1. Introduction
Cloud computing is considered a cost-effective, on-demand system that provides access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Nowadays, cloud-enabled solutions are widely used in various areas such as businesses, governmental offices, medical, education, and entertainment industry (Bhuiyan et al., 2019). Adoption of cloud services provides various benefits to the adopting organizations, such as resource efficiency (Khayer et al., 2020; Marston et al., 2011; Skafi et al., 2020), cost efficiency (Carroll et al., 2011) and productivity gains for all organizations (Skafi et al., 2020). Cloud service providers (CSPs) are key in delivering computing services and can achieve computing-related tasks effectively and economically (Asiaei & Rahim, 2019). Cloud computing is more applicable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They could take advantage of cloud computing services, which will enrich technology-enabled business and significantly reduce cost impacts on their business (Khayer et al., 2020). Businesses can derive several advantages from cloud computing (Asiaei & Rahim, 2019, Gupta et al., 2013). However, SME organizations are slow in accepting cloud services due to security and associated privacy concerns (Arafat, 2018). While many SMEs are moving into the digital marketplace, there is a golden opportunity for SMEs to reduce costs and improve information technology (IT) efficiency if they were to adopt cloud computing. Despite these advantages, there is still resistance from some SMEs to adopt cloud computing services (Bhuiyan et al., 2019).
While analysing prior literature on cloud computing adoption, it was found that prior research has mainly considered cloud computing security as a technology-related adoption issue (Alharbi, 2017; Khayer et al., 2020). However, in order to understand adoption, it is necessary to consider technological, human, social issues relating to cloud adoption security issues. These security and privacy requirements can be achieved by taking a comprehensive approach to adopting cloud computing from the organizational perspective. Prior researchers have emphasised security issues as being significant obstacles to adopt cloud computing. Further, some scholars have suggested security issues are key determinant to cloud computing adoption by organizations (Ayong & Naidoo, 2019; Khayer et al., 2020; Nagahawatta et al., 2021). Even though security is the most critical factor to consider when deciding the adoption of SMEs' cloud computing (Nagahawatta, 2022; Senarathna et al., 2018), studies have not identified all security-related factors together or provided an in-depth analysis of cloud computing adoption among SMEs.
Besides, the cloud computing landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. Not only are more providers and service offerings crowding the space, but cloud infrastructure that traditionally was limited to single-vendor data centres is also evolving. (Suo et al., 2018). Further, the virtual machine, which has been used in cloud computing for years, has become outdated as the container in cloud computing is increasingly becoming popular with the introduction of virtualization at the operating system level. (Liu & Zhao, 2014). Although cloud container provides many benefits, they also have process-level isolation, which may sometimes create a less secure environment (Suo et al., 2018). Therefore, it is essential to study security challenges in a new technological context. This study aims to investigate factors related to security that influence the intention to adopt cloud computing in SMEs. The research question being explored are:
What are the factors related to security and privacy that influence the intention to adopt cloud computing by SME’s?