Infrastructure as a service adoption model for South African universities using thematic analysis

Background: South African universities are dealing with concerning socio-economic issues and budgetary limits that affect university operations negatively. It is no longer viable for most universities to purchase and maintain information technology (IT) infrastructure systems while also keeping up with the ever-changing technology across the world.Objectives: The aim of this article is to explore the benefits that come with infrastructure as a service (IaaS), as compared to the on-premises model that is currently used by most South African universities.Method: This article adopts both transaction cost theory (TCT) and diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) as the underpinning theories. The interpretivist paradigm was applied to gain a comprehensive understanding of how university management perceives IaaS adoption.Results: The results introduce three new and critical factors that need to be considered by university managers whenever they want to move their on-premises IT model to cloud IaaS: trust, security and attitude.Conclusion: The research finds that IaaS offers advantages in scalability, flexibility, accessibility and on-demand deployment. These findings underscore the importance of addressing barriers to IaaS adoption within the specific context of South African universities.Contribution: The findings of this article add to the cloud computing literature, by presenting a new model that IT decision-makers can utilise when considering moving their on-premises IT infrastructure to IaaS in South African universities. The article recommends that future research could expand the number of universities from which data are collected.