A survey on cloud computing adoption in Kenya’s banking industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study was geared towards finding out whether commercial banking industry in Kenya is aware of cloud computing, ready to adopt it and its attitude towards cloud computing. The study was guided by three research questions. The questions are as follows: Is the commercial banking industry in Kenya aware of cloud computing? Is it ready to adopt it? What is its attitude on cloud computing? The study targeted commercial banks in Kenya. Questionnaires were administered to Information Technology (IT) managers/Chief Information Officers (CIO) depending on the organization structure were administered with questionnaires. The findings from the study revealed that majority of the IT managers/CIOs were aware of cloud computing technology as shown by a 95% respondents defining cloud computing terminology correctly. More so, a considerable number of the respondents were familiar with cloud computing classification. Sixty percent of the respondents were aware of software as a service and infrastructure as a service, 55% were aware of classification platform as a service and only 15% were unaware of any classification. The findings clearly show that cloud computing concept is known to most IT managers/CIOs. The study also sorts to find out the attitude of IT managers on cloud technology. The results revealed that, majority of commercial banks were not willing to adopt the technology. None of the respondents’ banks were using the technology nor did they assign any IT budget to cloud projects in their 2011 budget. The study also revealed that banks are not willing to put their IT services to cloud in the next 2 years. Security concerns, complexity of moving application for cloud and loss of control to third party management came out strongly as the major factors hindering the adoption of cloud technology. When readiness of the commercial banks into adopting cloud computing was put into test. Majority of the banks (75%) of respondents had not trained their IT personnel on cloud technology. Moreover, only a few banks had a backup internet connection. Internet is the backbone of the cloud technology and therefore banks need to be keen on this so as to ensure availability and stability of IT services incase one connection is down. It was however encouraging to note that all banks surveyed had an IT security team put in place and 80% had network monitoring tools in place.