Guidelines for adoption of cloud services

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are an important part of the economy. In many cases, they are feeders to Large enterprises (LE). SMEs might not possess a dedicated IT team like LE. The IT footprint of SME is not heavy, mainly because of the extent of business. In some cases, SMEs have lesser IT budget which is maintained by tighter controls and more rationalization for the spending. SMEs differ in the organization structure and the way in which strategic decisions are made. Due to this, cloud computing is becoming advantageous to SMEs by offering scalable infrastructure and many other capabilities available as services. The computing resources are available when needed, and paid only based on their use. However, adopting cloud services requires sufficient planning. When the planning is not adequate, the services do not bring appropriate value to the business, as it is the first step of the Plan, Build and Run process. In order to plan better, it is necessary to understand the readiness of the enterprise and understand its current situation. This can be achieved by undergoing readiness assessments during the plan phase, much before cloud adoption as adoption is a part of the build and run phase. This study identifies the various factors influencing the cloud adoption, and based on the factors, it proposes a readiness assessment tool, which could be used by SME in order to assess the cloud readiness.