Acceptance of cloud of things by small and medium enterprises in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study identifies the key factors influencing the decision of Sri Lankan SMEs to adopt Cloud of Things (CoT) using Partial Least Square Structural Model Analysis. A comprehensive literature review was carried out to determine the factors. The intention to adopt was linked to the identified factors of savings of cost, relative advantage, sharing and collaboration, reliability, privacy and security as well as technical issues via the proposed conceptual framework and formulated hypotheses. An online survey was carried out to collect data from 263Sri Lankan SMEs.Factors including savings of cost, sharing and collaboration, reliability, privacy and security as well as technical issues were noted to have a positive impact on the adoption of CoT while relative advantage did not show statistical significance.The findings also confirmed that the factor security and privacy to be the main concerns in the adoption of CoT.This study can provide guidelines forSME managers, cloud service providers and regulatory organizations in establishing effective CoT adoption strategies.CoT is the main driver of Industry 4.0 and SMEs could achieve the same via proper government funding.