Recently we have witnessed a new kind of IT advancement. It is a phenomenon where various types of IT capabilities are centralized into data centers to ensure that such resources are available wherever and whenever they are needed. Cloud computing is the latest version of IT service practice that reflects such new trends in IT. Although cloud computing is considered a paradigm shift of IT service design and delivery in IS communities and generates large amounts of interest from business entities, few studies have examined this new IT and business environment. To better understand the organizational application of cloud computing, this study aims both to investigate economic payoffs from cloud computing investment and explore cloud computing adoption within the firm. This study is one of the first of its kinds to assess this new IT service model (i.e., cloud computing) using empirical validation. The proposed study can make contributions to the IS literature by (1) extending the boundary of the IS literature by reflecting the new trend of the IT industry; (2) continuing the debate about business value of IT; and (3) establishing a theoretical framework for cloud computing adoption, which can be applied to further studies on cloud computing
