  Small and Medium size Enterprises (SME) are considered as a backbone of many
developing and developed economies of the world; they are the driving force to
any major economy across the globe. Through Cloud Computing firms outsource
their entire information technology (IT) process while concentrating more on
their core business. It allows businesses to cut down heavy cost incurred over
IT infrastructure without losing focus on customer needs. However, Cloud
industry to an extent has struggled to grow among SMEs due to the reluctance
and concerns expressed by them. Throughout the course of this study several
interviews were conducted and the literature was reviewed to understand how
cloud providers offer services and what challenges SMEs are facing. The study
identified issues like cloud knowledge, interoperability, security and
contractual concerns to be hindering SMEs adoption of cloud services. From the
interviews common practices followed by cloud vendors and what concerns SMEs
have were identified as a basis for a cloud framework which will bridge gaps
between cloud vendors and SMEs. A stepwise framework for cloud adoption is
formulated which identifies and provides recommendation to four most
predominant challenges which are hurting cloud industry and taking SMEs away
from cloud computing, as well as guide SMEs aiding in successful cloud
adoption. Moreover, this framework streamlines the cloud adoption process for
SMEs by removing ambiguity in regards to fundamentals associated with their
organisation and cloud adoption process.

Computers and Society