Drivers for strategic choice of cloud computing as online service in SMEs

Cloud Computing Service (CCS) paradigm is changing IT strategy of organizations in the digital world. CCS that requires few upfront investments and uses lease-based pricing is especially relevant to the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which have limited resources and may not know their true valuation for the IT prior to adoption. Thus, this research aims to investigate the influential factors of SMEs' strategic choice of CCS as online service. Relying upon Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) paradigm, we identify both generic and context-specific factors from the three aspects and explain how the identified factors affect SMEs' CCS strategic choices. We hope this research can make contributions to innovation diffusion theory and IT strategy literature. We also hope the research with progress going on can generate insights for the CCS vendors who care about the sector of SME as well as the government administrators to make appropriate policies or supports for SMEs.