Cloud Computing Approach for UTP Educational Hardware and Software Resource Sharing

Background: In the few years, the emergence of cloud computing has been receiving attention and a lot of higher education institution began to adopt cloud computing services for their educational system and reported that their performance increase. Therefore, it can be seen that cloud-based application is, generally, becoming a trend educational field.
Aims: In order to assess the feasibility of cloud computing approach for Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), this study aims to investigate the thoughts of IT experts in UTP on adoption of cloud for resource sharing, as well as the factors that influence the acceptance of innovation in UTP.
Methods: This study adopted qualitative and quantitative research method. For qualitative method, snowball sampling approach is used to interview the participants and online survey is conducted for quantitative research methods.
Results: Based on the theory of diffusion of innovation, the results of data analysis suggest that most IT experts in UTP which consists of lecturers and IT staff do not have extensive understanding of cloud computing: and this has influenced the rate of adoption of innovation in UTP. In addition, it seems that although most of the lecturers, staff and students already have experience in using cloud service in everyday live, they are not aware of the different type of cloud services. From the result analysis, most of them are expecting the cloud adoption, but until a proper implementation plan is made, the adoption seem quite hard to be done.
Conclusion: Although there are several obstacles to cloud adoption, the adoption is expectable and achievable with enough expertise and proper planning. If the effort to learn about cloud computing is high, the adoption will be much easier.