Re-Evaluating SMEs IT Readiness in the Age of the Cloud

Cloud-based services present the smaller firm with the opportunity to reassess the organisational resources devoted to complex software and hardware management. In this paper, we explore the technology, knowledge and relational characteristics associated with software as a service, from the point of view of the small firm as a user of this service. Our focus is not on the adoption decision per se but on the pre-conditions influencing the adoption and implementation of IT by firms. In the literature, ‘IT Readiness’ is a relatively novel conceptual approach that can be defined as “the ability of a country, enterprise or organizational unit to be prepared, willing to adopt, use and benefit from e-innovations” (Aboelmaged, 2014). Here, we examine IT Readiness as an appropriate conceptual framework that seeks to understand these pre-conditions in small firms and consider how they might be affected by a move to software as a service. Consequently, we argue for an augmented IT Readiness framework that incorporates features associated with cloud-based services. We develop an augmented IT Readiness framework that explicitly includes relational elements missing from earlier conceptions.