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Information Systems Outsourcing pp 235–256Cite as

The Differential Benefits of Cloud Computing for Small and Medium Versus Large Firms

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Part of the book series: Progress in IS ((PROIS))

Abstract

Cloud computing is a fundamental shift in the way computing power is acquired and consumed. It is a special case of IS outsourcing where some IT-related tasks and resources are outsourced to cloud vendors. Cloud computing confers unique capabilities such as heterogeneity, scalability, accessibility, availability, consumption based pricing, fully managed and standardized services on the adopting organizations. These capabilities in-turn result in several strategic and operational benefits to the adopting organizations. However, these capabilities are not leveraged by all adopting firms uniformly. Firms utilize these capabilities based on their orientation towards exploration and exploitation. While SMEs are more aligned towards exploratory activities, large enterprises are inclined towards exploitation. Therefore, we posit that the SMEs and large enterprises accrue differential benefits from cloud adoption such that SMEs leverage cloud to attain strategic benefits and large enterprises seek operational benefits from cloud adoption. Through a survey based exploratory study we found that there is a systematic difference between SMEs and large enterprises in the way they leverage cloud capabilities. Based on the results, we deduce that managers of SMEs believe that they can use cloud computing for exploration and on the contrary, managers of large enterprises believe that they can use cloud computing for exploitation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Scalability—Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work in a capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India

    Laxmi S. V. Gunupudi

  2. Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology Department, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

    Raijv Kishore

Authors
  1. Laxmi S. V. Gunupudi
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  2. Raijv Kishore
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Correspondence to Raijv Kishore .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ourso College of Business, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Rudy Hirschheim

  2. School of Business, University Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Armin Heinzl

  3. Institute for Information Systems, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Jens Dibbern

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Gunupudi, L.S.V., Kishore, R. (2020). The Differential Benefits of Cloud Computing for Small and Medium Versus Large Firms. In: Hirschheim, R., Heinzl, A., Dibbern, J. (eds) Information Systems Outsourcing. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45819-5_10

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