ABSTRACT
Technology acceptance is the intention of a user to engage the technology for the purpose that it is developed. Its usability is the potential to accomplish the goals of the user. The functionality of acceptance and usability in technology development is very important. Cloud Computing Technology emerged recently as a new strategy in Information Technology (IT). The actual cloud computing deployments are still "rare and slow" especially in developing countries like Nigeria. To realize a substantial adoption and usage, it has to be deployed with acceptance and usability measurement tools to continuously assess and track Cloud acceptance and usage level that would enable user enjoy the benefits that Cloud computing can provide. Currently, the extant technology acceptance models are experiencing inadequacies in measuring Cloud acceptance and usability; because they were designed to address simple technologies in place as at when they were developed, such as MS Word. These models needed to be improved upon to meet the present day demand for sophisticated and complex technologies like Cloud. Related literature has identified some limitations in the area of methodologies employed in the design and empirical validation of the extant models, which have over time resulted to model inadequacies in measuring newer technologies. There is a challenge in the methodologies used in design and validation of existing acceptance and usability models, such as TAM, TRA, TPB, UTAUT and many others. Thus, there is the need to develop a unified acceptance, and usability model for Cloud Computing technology to assess and validate the end-users perception on Cloud usage.
Survey methodology was extensively used to realize the research objectives. Two models were developed. Firstly, a ‘unified model’ was developed to determine Cloud-dependent behavioural factors using Cloud computing adoption-based existing studies. Secondly, the main research model; where constructs of the unified model of Cloud and environmental factors were combined with UTAUT to develop acceptance and usability model for Cloud computing technology. Research instruments were designed to formulate the qualitative concepts of the resultant variables of the model into ordinal scales and numeric values. These attributes were used as input for analysis which was carried out with SPSS and AMOS to explore the model. This model used structural equation modeling (SEM) to indicate how the dependent affect independent variables; measured various estimates and causal analysis for Cloud computing acceptance and usability. Data was collected by survey method using questionnaire as an instrument.
The result of analysis of data has established that some determinants such as TRT, SI, FC, AXT, PU, PEOU, PR and DOU significantly explained the behavioural Intention (BI) and usage behaviour (UB) of Cloud. This confirms that users consider certain variables; such as TRT, SI, FC, AXT, PU before signing up for the technology. Also, these variables resulted to 31% of the variance of BI and 44% of the variance of UB. The power in explaining the variance of UB is stronger than that of BI. Statistics indicated that the research model outperformed the existing one when it was compared. This is evident by the values of Chi-square/degree of freedom (χ2/df)(1.186, 4.612), Root Mean Square Error Approximation (RMSEA) (0.023, 0.073) and Standardized RMR (SRMR) (0.031, 0.073). This research study has developed user acceptance and usability model for cloud computing technology to assess and validate the end-users perception on Cloud usage. Proper understanding and utilization of the model will enable practitioners and top management in organizations to quickly design intervention to aid the persons with low awareness and use of cloud
