An exploratory study on the adoption of private cloud in the UAE banking and government sectors

A recent development in computing technology is, cloud computing. Globally, surveys such as Forrester (Bélissent, 2011) and Gartner (Smith et al., 2009) have indicated that CIOs are increasingly becoming interested in cloud computing due to the many benefits it brings to organisations, especially the cost savings. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), reports show that billions of Dirham have been allocated by organisations in the UAE for provision of IT services (cloud computing included), however, only a few studies were found which cover the adoption of cloud computing, specifically in the Government sector (Scott, 2012; Elbadawi, 2011). This research, therefore, aims to fill this gap of lack of such research in the UAE, covering a sample of banks and government organisations. This research comes at a time when UAE ranks as the top country within the GCC region, as cited in the UN survey on e-government (U.N., 2012).