Distant but close: Locational,relational and temporal proximity in cloud computing adoption

Proximity in the cloud computing literature

One of the most cited ¹ definitions of cloud describes it as ‘ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction’ (Mell and Grance, 2011 p.2). This definition highlights that cloud differs substantially from earlier forms of IT provision. With our research agenda in mind, we re-read this definition of cloud and note the following. First, network access and ubiquity signal that cloud resources may be provided from different geographical locations. Second, the ‘minimal management effort or provider interaction’ suggests changes in the relationship of the organization with the technology vendors and its employees, who traditionally have been heavily engaged in interactions and negotiations throughout the adoption process. Third, the ‘convenient’, ‘on-demand’, ‘rapidly provisioned and released’ characteristics suggest a temporal dimension, as technological resources can be easily and quickly adopted, altered or adjusted on-demand, inviting a comparison with past experiences and justifying the choice of cloud based on imagined benefits. Thus, this definition is in line with the cloud metaphor as a technology that is remote. The definition also shows the relevance of the locational, relational and temporal dimensions to portray this remoteness as a distinctive characteristic of cloud.

We employed these three dimensions to revisit the literature on cloud and explore whether the perception of cloud as remote is consistent across the literature. We found that this new reading of the literature reveals inconsistencies in the perception of these three proximal dimensions of cloud and thus begs a deeper investigation and analysis of cloud proximity. On the one hand, existing research shows that cloud indeed enables organizations to go beyond the locational, relational and temporal boundaries experienced with previous technological decisions. On the other hand, researchers argue that organizations adopting cloud remain bound to location, relation and temporal restrictions, and implicitly question whether cloud is a radically different provisioning paradigm. Here, we review how these alternative perspectives relate to each of the three dimensions.

First, locationality is recognized as a prevailing concern for cloud (Brynjolfsson et al., 2010). Cloud is an evolving technical innovation (Venters and Whitley, 2012) that has enabled the outsourcing of data-centres (Buyya, 2009) and virtualized computing resources. This change in technology provision enables organizations to access technology vendors across the world, overcoming in this way the restrictions imposed by their geographical location and their need to manage datacentres at their own location. As a new form of digital infrastructure supply, cloud services are likely to be adopted in unusual ways as ‘they span beyond the boundaries of a single corporation. Traditional rules and mechanisms of alignment, centralization, and cost control need to be augmented with new governance principles’ (Yoo et al., 2010, p. 732). Cloud offers ‘location independence’ (Iyer and Henderson 2010; Polyviou and Pouloudi 2015), so that the location of the provider is, it is suggested, no longer important. As noted by Oliveira et al. (2014), even local legal and regulatory frameworks do not necessarily impact cloud adoption decisions, letting organizations seek technological solutions beyond their local or regional geographical restrictions. Other research, however, notes that jurisdictional geography, particularly the lack of clarity of where data are stored (Denny 2010), and specific legal jurisdictions, may impact privacy and trust decisions (Pearson and Benameur 2010) and have security implications (Morgan and Conboy, 2013; Polyviou and Pouloudi, 2015) and are thus important considerations. Recent debate on cloud data sovereignty (relating to governments’ authority over data stored in local or foreign data-centres) also highlights geopolitical pressures for certain data locationality (Amoore, 2018; Braud et al., 2021). Furthermore, the impact of latency (Venters and Whitley 2012), that is, the time a message takes to be delivered being limited to the speed of light through a fibre optic cable (e.g., Yoo, 2011), becomes globally consequential. The rise of Fog and Edge computing (Dastjerdi, 2016), and the rise of profiting on arbitraging latency (Patterson 2012) highlight the challenge of latency in cloud services. Indeed, trading markets (such as IEX) introduce delay (known as ‘speed bumps’) to limit the trading opportunity of arbitrage against geographical differences in cloud based financial services (Friedman, 2017).

Second, cloud reconfigures the organization’s relations with its stakeholders, not least because it changes its boundaries with employees, customers and other organizations (Willcocks et al., 2014). In cloud, relationships between vendor and customer are often considered ethereal (in line with the cloud metaphor), mediated entirely by technology (the network) and ephemeral or transactional. Cloud restructures the relationship of the organization with technology vendors because the traditional way technology services are purchased is significantly altered (Bardhan et al., 2010). While ‘traditional’ requests for proposals (RFP), tenders and contracts were a feature of software adoption, cloud services are promoted as off-the-shelf services to be purchased online in the form of a subscription pay-as-you-go pricing model (Marston 2011) often using only credit-card payments. Face to face meetings (whether virtual or physical) are usually assumed unlikely with cloud providers. As a result, direct relationships between vendors and customers may be eliminated and RFP approaches no longer used. Thus, provider trustworthiness in the context of cloud is interpreted in terms of provider reputation (Koehler et al., 2010) and the presence of certain website elements on the provider’s website (e.g., search box and social recommendation agent, Karimi and Walter 2015). Nonetheless, vendors’ potential to provide customer support remains critical when considering cloud adoption (Alshamaila et al., 2013), as well as vendor competences (Saedi and Iahad, 2013). Partner and competitive pressure also influence cloud adoption (Hsu et al., 2014; Khajeh-Hosseini, 2012; Low et al., 2011; Alshamaila et al., 2013). Additionally, the literature highlights changes in the relationships with internal stakeholders. It shows that different stakeholders of the organization, such as top management executives and the CIO, are actively involved in cloud adoption (Alshamaila et al., 2013; Low and Chen, 2011; Morgan and Conboy, 2013; Oliveira et al., 2014; Whitley et al., 2013; Polyviou et al., 2014). Business owners are also involved in such decision making: the ‘owner intention towards cloud’ was found as relevant to cloud adoption (Saedi and Iahad, 2013) as well as CIO innovativeness (Lian et al., 2014).

Finally, the cloud paradigm differs from earlier technologies because it alters the perception of technological impact over time (temporal dimension). It is assumed to be quicker to adopt with simpler contracting and purchasing arrangements. Furthermore, users can test candidate services before adopting (Surya et al., 2014) quickly and without a large investment. Organizations can also move their technology expenditures from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpΕx) (Van der Molen, 2009; Vouk, 2008) enabling more flexibility in temporally adjusting their expenditure. Cloud services thus offer strategic flexibility (Benlian et al., 2009) since organizations can extend or eliminate services on-demand. Nonetheless, cloud adoption may not be independent from past decisions. Venters and Whitley (2012) argue cloud adopters analyse cloud in terms of its ‘equivalence’ to a company’s existing historic on-premises IT provision. In this sense, temporal relevance goes beyond the notion of on-demand services that are used independently of any earlier computing provision. Rather than an entirely new paradigm, a notable number of studies consider cloud’s relative advantage, when compared to previous technology (e.g., comparisons with the mainframe or PC eras (Heath, 2012)), as one factor impacting cloud adoption decisions (Asatiani, 2015; Oliveira et al., 2014). In addition to taking a stance with reference to the past, cloud also enables organizations to remain flexible in the future. One of the stated advantages of cloud is its ability to scale on demand (Armbrust et al., 2010; Owens 2009), with scalability as a key adoption factor. Yet in all such cases, decision makers must relate their decision to an expectation (an imagined projection of the future) of dynamic demand and uncertainty (Espadas et al., 2013), compared with a remembered past of existing services and demands. Indeed, evaluating the cost of cloud involves comparing whether future demand is dynamic (favouring OpEx) or stable (favouring CapEx) based on a past demand. Cloud’s imagined future in the organization is also translated into foreseen cost benefits (Alshamaila et al., 2013; Khajeh-Hosseini, 2012; Lian et al., 2014; Morgan and Conboy, 2013) and foreseen risks associated with potential vendor lock-in (Sarkar and Young, 2011; Seethamraju, 2013; Trigueros-Preciado et al., 2013). Finally, cloud platforms and infrastructures (PaaS and IaaS) are generative and open to recombination (Yoo et al., 2010), thus enabling adopting companies to innovate upon them in ways that will evolve and change over time. Venters et al. (2014), however, show that such generativity exists within a temporal dynamic of change in which past technology and remembering are entwined with future technology and human intentions.

This review of the literature highlights the research interest in understanding cloud provision as a different paradigm for IT provisioning but reveals that there are mixed arguments as to whether cloud is indeed ‘remote’. This inconsistency begs for research into cloud proximity and particularly in its role in cloud adoption decision making. The locational, relational and temporal dimensions of proximity can provide a relevant preliminary conceptual framework for guiding such research as explained in the next subsection.

A theoretical perspective of proximity in cloud adoption

Drawing upon the literature review, we elaborate our theoretical perspective towards proximity in cloud adoption. As illustrated in Table 1, Locationality is related to physical or virtual distance. This also entails particular attention to the physical interaction of people (cf. O’Leary and Cummings (2007) examining proximity and distance in work groups in spatial terms). Relationality explicitly refers to social relationships among stakeholders, internal or external to the organization, as well as to relationships with a technology or technology service. Finally, our focus on temporality acknowledges that remembering and projecting should be examined, alongside the experienced present, as they can influence actions and thus may elaborate understanding of proximity in cloud adoption. While we present these three proximal dimensions separately to examine proximity in detail, they are entwined and interrelated – as elaborated upon in the analysis of our empirical material.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Proximity dimensions relevant to cloud adoption.

Proximity dimensions	Related concerns in the cloud adoption extant literature
Locationality	Physical or virtual distance of the cloud services; vendors’ geographical locations, governance principles, legal and regulatory frameworks; physical interaction of cloud stakeholders; network latency.
Relationality	Level of interaction with providers; social relationships among stakeholders, internal or external to the organization; relationships with cloud technology or services; contracts; service level agreements.
Temporality	Speed of adoption; ability to pilot services prior to decisions; equivalence with legacy systems; scalability; path dependencies, lock-in, and generativity; scalability for future innovation.

Our theoretical perspective thus allows for an alternative and complementary analysis of the cloud adoption decision-making and allows us to hone our research question to: How do the locational, relational and temporal dimensions of proximity influence cloud adoption decision making? The next section outlines our research approach for addressing this question.

Locational analysis of proximity

Our interviews show that location matters to cloud adopters in various ways. Several interviewees focussed on technical issues, related primarily to data and network locationality. Certainly, such technical issues were entwined with organisational issues and relevant contextual conditions. To stress this contingency, we refer to these concerns as ‘organi-technical’.

The location of the adopters’ organisational data within the physical cloud, and the cloud-providing organisation’s relationship to that data were foremost among this type of concerns. This was contingent on the type of data being put into the cloud service (with customer data and intellectual property as most likely to cause concern over location) and particularly acute for the military and heavily regulated industries, and those with patient data [i4,i6] where the national regulation (or lack thereof) prevented storing data outside of the country. In general, where national or local regulations were perceived to impose restrictions or requirements, interviewees were adamant that local datacentres should be used – though this included selecting datacentres whose controlling organisation was covered by the same political laws or requirements. For example, data protection requirements (such as GDPR and UK-GDPR) led to a desire for physically localised cloud technology and legal organisations ‘inside the EU’ [s9]; ‘it needs to be stored somewhere in the EU data centre […] all have to be in Europe. That’s by legal, audit laws, accounting laws’ [i35].

Interestingly, the global cloud vendor [CSP1] saw things differently regarding the legal and regulatory issues for the physical location of their datacentres: ‘[Datacentres] show a long-term commitment to a country. It’s more psychological than anything else…it shows that you’re going to make a multimillion-dollar investment in countries. It’s important because it’s seen as a sign of acknowledging the world’s changed and privacy and compliance … even though there’s other ways of solving [those legal challenges without in-country datacentres]... it seems important’. This quote emphasises how technical and organisational proximity issues entwine in their provision of services.

Globalised businesses’ decisions were complex as they needed datacentres in multiple physical locations but covered by specific laws and the relationships between them [CSP2] ‘due to multi-regional issues’ [s4]. ‘It’s more about regionality, we’re primarily in Northern Europe cloud regions’ [i33]. Regions were also chosen for disaster-recovery reasons – ‘cross regionality means we can failover to a secondary cloud [region]’ [i33]. Two people raised the issue of geopolitical risk for data, stating that today ‘you wouldn’t use [a particular country’s cloud services]… they were a credible player five years ago…and then obviously [a change in political circumstances]… we [now] blacklist [that country]’ [s31]. [CSP2] also noted that geopolitical realities inhibited cloud adoption in certain places due to tensions between countries on technology exports and imports.

Locationality influenced adoption decisions due to the network latency and bandwidth of the network connecting use with cloud services. This was acute for global firms that must ‘…consider [the] speed of access’ [s16]. This was associated with access to and from users’ ⁴ physical locations, so reflected the organisation’s global structure and staff mobility. [CSP2] noted that political and network instability led to the impossibility of cloud access in certain geographical regions (e.g., in Afghanistan and Iraq) restricting cloud adoption – something global cloud services providers need to consider. Ultimately, as [i15] stressed, cloud should provide ‘the capability to operate anytime and from anyplace’. In this respect, latency and bandwidth concerns were also organi-technical.

The proximal locality of the sales and marketing operation of the cloud service provider – what we term mercantile locationality – significantly affected adoption decisions. Interviewees were often interested in meeting the vendors in person to assess the vendor’s reachability and responsiveness, and to gain assistance in understanding the product in the context of their organization’s needs. Several avenues were used to this end. For example, interviewees used trade fairs and shows to identify candidate local vendors. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, many such events were organized online and although they were preferred by some respondents, they did not replace physical events. Instead, people became ‘more selective [of] physical attendance’ [s2], even though one respondent noted that ‘after the pandemic I am trying to prioritise physical events’ [s3]. Almost all those surveyed in the second phase of our research planned to interact both physically and virtually going forward. Notably, however, it was clear that physical interaction had substantially returned, and, significantly for our research, all interaction involved local vendor staff – usually within country. This is consistent with the evidence from the first phase of our research where adopters visited trade shows to meet with ‘local sales staff’ [i25], focussed on cloud services sales operation in their own countries or visited the cloud vendors offices to identify candidate services.

From the vendor’s perspective, appreciation of this customer need is reflected in the major investment they make to physically attend or sponsor others’ tradeshows, ⁵ organize conferences and shows, ⁶ provide websites aligned with local geographical requirements or focussed on particular sectors, organise site visits to discuss products in context, or have local offices around the world ⁷ – such as the iconic ‘Salesforce tower’ and Google, Microsoft and Amazon’s flagship offices across the globe. The cloud service provider also noted the value in meeting with potential adopters: ‘It’s being able to read body language... Are they bored? Are they interested? Or do they have a question, but they’re not asking it because hey, leaders know everything’. [CSP1]. Indeed, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, vendors continued to seek locational proximity with customers by holding ‘local’ events, albeit virtually. For example, Salesforce Live UK and Ireland, held in July 2021, ⁸ included local speakers and ‘virtual rooms’ to ‘connect live with customers’. Many other vendors and consultancies held similar locally focussed virtual summits during this period ⁹ that included local speakers, languages, industry challenges and locally targeted sales staff. As [CPS1] stated ‘would we not have a sales team in a country? I can’t see that’. Reference sites also provided an important location where adopters met others who had purchased a cloud service. For example, [i4] travelled to consult users of the services being considered: ‘Outside Greece. I visited a hospital in Barcelona (St Pauli) and … from the USA’ [i4].

We use the term counsel to refer to concerns about the proximity of expertise to assist with the decision making, and the proximity of expertise once the cloud service is in use. As [s17] explained of his team: ‘Our plan is to get a consultancy to help, someone who has the skills to develop our own skills, and lead them by hand... get the mentoring, planning, external skills’. A similar demand for skills was reflected upon by the CSP: ‘For a customer, sometimes it’s a sign of commitment too, it’s having the skills on hand, sitting down and having that conversation’. [CSP1]. Across the empirical corpus, it appeared important that, where they were used, they were located locally – ‘in our area’ [s2]. [s8] even argued: ‘[its] more [important than the datacentres’ location for] the consultants, [to]understand the way we work’. Similarly, [s11] wanted ‘implementation partners’ to be local but didn’t care where SaaS providers were located. While for [s15] the location of the datacentre was less important, they were clear that ‘sales support/consultants [location] was very important’. Equally, respondents showed a demand for on-site technical training. For example, [i27] were keen to have training with the cloud company’s software developers at their own offices.

Vendors were also favoured if support was in the local language and were located geographically close-by. This also related to time-zones: ‘what we want is tech support … which for us [has to be 24hrs a day because]... there’s always going to be one [of our offices] in every time zone’ [i31]. This point was reiterated by another interviewee: ‘You want to be sure that you’re not dealing with a company that only operates nine-six in the UK when [many of your users are located outside the UK]’ [i32]. Beyond just time zones, demand for counsel also related to being available beyond usual working hours: ‘We’re only looking at vendors from Cyprus. […] We need to know we can pick up the phone at any given time and find them, because our hypermarkets work 14 hours a day’ [i34].

Table 2 summarises our empirical data on locationality and shows how it can be grouped in the organi-technical, mercantile and counsel aspects that emerged organically as we analysed our interview data thematically.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Locational proximity in cloud adoption.

Evidence from the interviews	Indicative interviews	Emerging proximal aspects
Data-locationality based on type of data, legal compliance Geopolitical risk Network-locationality (latency, bandwidth)	[i1], [i4], [i6], [i15], [i25], [i23], [i32], [i33], [i35], [CSP2], [s5], [s3], [s16], [s31]	Organi-technical locationality concerns the location of the servers and the datacentre and their distance from the organisation
Meeting the vendor in person, presentations Going to trade fairs and shows to identify local vendors Vendors to have local offices around the world, aim at having flagship offices Travelling to reference sites which have already adopted the service	[i2], [i4], [i23], [s2], [s3] [s5], [s6], [CSP1]	Mercantile locationality proximity of the sales and marketing operation of the cloud service provider
Close location of consultants (who may make up for lack of local cloud counsel) On-site training by the vendor Counselling in the local language, time zones and aligned with working hours	[i27], [i31], [i32], [i34], [s2], [s8], [s11], [s17]	Counsel locationality concerns the proximity of expertise to assist with the decision making, and the availability of expertise once the cloud service is in use

Relational analysis of proximity

The interviews showed that adoption decisions related to the intended use of cloud but were also strongly dependent on the technological landscape that pre-existed within their organisation as well as the organisational culture and landscape more broadly defined. In this respect, the organi-technical aspect is also relevant in relational proximity. For example, in [i30], the adoption decision was influenced by complaints from staff and failures in the existing IT systems which was a ‘complex, fragmented and expensive architecture… It stinks, everybody hates it, and we’re paying for it’ allowing more radical adoption decisions to be made. This history allowed a digital transformation of the whole organization in relation to ‘a digital road map which [would] allow the [organization] to harness the benefits of cloud technologies’ [i30].

Pre-existing (legacy) systems were attractive to Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers who would discount prices for moving them into the cloud (so-called ‘lift and shift’ projects): ‘if you can show it is a lift and shift they’ll give you loads of money off’ [i31]. Furthermore, specific legacy applications that would lock-in cloud customers were directly supported: ‘AWS have got their own Murex onboarding teams to help companies migrate the whole thing to AWS because they know they will get loads of money off you… because Murex is a really sticky product’ [i31].

Such relationality with a company’s pre-existing technology and organisational landscape also influenced the cloud service providers' products which have become targeted at sectors and verticals. Close collaboration of the sales-support operations of cloud services with the purchasing operation of the adopting company and their cloud adopter ensued (mercantile relationality). Relational proximity was evident in the selection of vendors, whereby cultural congruence was sought: ‘It wasn’t long before we decided that they are our preferred candidate really. We saw the way they deal with us, the way they work and that [they] built a personal relationship with us and they quickly became the sole option. […] So, we want people that are approachable as persons, people that we can work with for an idea’ [i16].

While some cloud vendor products might not be tailored for specific sectors, providers sales operations often were: ‘hyperscalers [cloud vendors] have got smart… Initially they were like a utility provider. But they have now spun up dedicated sales teams and capabilities relevant to different sectors and verticals’ [i32]. Notably, however, for one interviewee in the retail sector AWS could not be used ‘as a retailer it would seem very strange to pay Amazon, a competitor, for AWS’ [i34].

Occasionally a strong symbiotic relationship of adopters and vendors developed. For example, [i34] reported a hand-in-hand technological transition of the vendor’s and the client’s services to the cloud: ‘[we] faced a difficult decision. Do I leave the vendor behind? Who has supported me and we’re happy with for so many years… Do I help the vendor upskill? Do I push the vendor to upskill?’. Organisational size influenced the type and level of collaboration: ‘It depends on the scale, size and complexity of the organisation… [in] larger [organisations] you get a procurement function involved [with the CIO]... to do the vendor management…negotiating contracts, doing due diligence’ [i32]. We noted that the increasing pressure to adopt cloud services during the pandemic maintained or enhanced high levels of interaction with vendors.

It follows that trusted relationships with vendors clearly influence adoption decisions. [i28] contacted an existing vendor for an opinion: ‘Our main vendor is ... we discussed this thoroughly with them and they encouraged us to get it’. Vendors strived to prove they can be reachable and to establish collaborative relationships – and to provide information and success stories. [i16] reported how a vendor assisted them with an internal decision meeting: ‘they did help me to set the presentation up, they did send me material. What I presented was based on what they presented to me’. Some interviewees held tight existing relationships with vendors and would not risk changing them: ‘It’s a bit like dealing with a crack dealer, I suppose. But a very, very mature and sort of personable one’ [i31].

For some large organisations the vendor relationship is close enough to be a partnership: ‘it’s also a great way of keeping skills sharp within house… Partner with vendors, we create common solutions. Everyone’s happy, brilliant...’ [i33]. This was also reflected upon by the cloud vendor [CSP1]: ‘some technology companies protect their engineering teams from customers. We’ve gone the opposite [way] 90% of what we build comes from interactions with the customer: 10% comes from knowing the customer well enough that we can invent on their behalf and that requires that our engineers have direct contact with customers’.

Another relational issue was more junior staff’s desire to gain skills in particular cloud offerings and build their future careers around those vendor specific cloud skills (rather than necessarily within their own company) – something cloud providers encouraged: ‘At a developer level, you tend to get more of that: “I want to be [cloud] certified”, or “I want to be the best in the [cloud service]. At our conferences you see people wearing [jackets showing their personal level of certification]” [CSP1]. A similar strategy extended to very senior staff: ‘there are a lot of C-suite executives… who want to be in the press for having done something really impressive... showing how they’ve managed to scale up because of the cloud’ and so working closely with the vendors to co-author case studies [CSP1].

Relational aspects internal to the organisation were also significant. Future end users were usually involved – indeed for [i4] ‘it was recommended by doctors to the IT people’. In other cases, end users provided insights and assisted the IT team to ‘gather the requirements internally’ [i35]. At the senior level, relations between IT leadership and the company board impacted decisions to adopt: ‘they want to examine and to check my decision-making process really […] to ask good insightful questions and potentially expose flaws of my thinking’ [i22].

Interviewees also drew on peers in professional networks within the cloud adoption: ‘We use recommendations, or through networking, for example via the Worshipful Company of IT or CTO Academy’ [s17]. Existing relationships and peers shaped cloud perceptions: ‘I have a relationship with a couple of consultants who I can call and ask their opinion on things like these’ [i22]; ‘I asked some colleagues that had already adopted the same cloud service in their organization to advise the most suitable solution’ [i11]. Similarly, [i32] noted that ‘instead of having to do the beauty parade [of providers]… we try to [gain] real examples of where organisations have been successful’ – and for many this included trying to ‘assess what solutions [our competitors]’ used through success stories [i18]. Overall, trusted relationships provided valuable information and were deemed important. Table 3 summarises our empirical findings on relationality.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 3.

Relational proximity in cloud adoption.

Evidence from the interviews	Indicative interviews	Emerging proximal aspects
Issues with existing IT systems Focus on lock-in with discounts for moving sticky legacy Culture congruence, (e.g., retail rejecting AWS)	[i30], [i31], [i32]	Organi-technical relationality concerns the relationship of the organisation with existing technology
Strong symbiotic relationship of adopters and vendors, for example, hand-in-hand technological transition Trusted relationships between cloud vendor and customer, (e.g., assisting the decision maker in preparing internal presentation) Staff’s desire to gain skills or co-author case-studies.	[i28], [i31], [i32], [i34], [s4], [s11], [CSP1]	Mercantile relationality refers to the close collaboration of the sales-support operation of cloud services with the purchasing operation
End-users involved in the adoption decision making Relations between IT leadership and organization’s senior executives’ impact cloud adoption Draw on trusted peers to elicit information on cloud services and find consultants Establish relationships with other stakeholders to assist in cloud service selection Seek for success stories from vendor	[i4], [i9], [i18], [i11], [i22], [i32], [i33], [i35], [s17], [CSP1]	Counsel relationality concerns how stakeholders engaged in counselling adopters during their decision making

Temporal analysis of proximity

Our temporal analysis regards past experiences with cloud’s technology predecessors and earlier experiences with technology experts as well as projections on how business needs can be served by the new service both from a technical and from a support perspective.

Technical aspects of cloud such as scalability, cost and time to introduce services were entwined with how the organisation’s adopter projected how their cloud usage would unfold into the future (showing how temporality also carries organi-technical aspects). Rather than adopting a static technology, interviewees were concerned about scalability and evolution of the cloud service in comparison to existing static technology (such as on-premises servers): ‘scalability matters, because we buy, sell companies, hire people, reduce staff members etc. We don’t want to be tied to an infrastructure for something that isn’t entirely changeable’. They also acknowledged the difficulties in realistic cost projections: ‘What we’re not considering is trajectory… it’s this much now but Microsoft just announced a 9% uplift in costs [that] wasn’t anticipated’ [i33].

Additionally, many sought to increase the speed of innovation, through ‘the minimal time required to introduce the [new] service in the organization’ [i21]. Many anticipated growing data analysis requirements: What if our ‘[data requirements] rise exponentially… hockey-stick… It’s a balance between [a slow] move to the cloud, [or] accelerating the move to the cloud, and then work on modernisation, orchestration’ [i33].

A number of those interviewed mentioned the technical debt they carry in their organisations when adopting cloud services. Technical debt relates to the cost of re-engineering their existing technology estate, since past choices of technology inhibit and shape the current cloud adoption process. For example, one company had an old IBM DB2 database running on-premises but wanted to adopt Microsoft’s Azure cloud product: ‘We need to move DB2 to the cloud. There is no enterprise instance of DB2 in the cloud at this point… [Azure promise] January 2023...[i.e.,] in the future… but it doesn’t exist… we don’t want to go multi-cloud … but I don’t want to be a guinea pig for the Microsoft guys to work out how to do [it]’[i33]. Conversely, negative experiences with systems were also considered when imagining and desiring future functionality. In [i35], users were invited to provide feedback on ‘What’s wrong with our existing system?’

Interviewees undertook considerable remembering and projecting to consider cloud and its impact within the context of their own organization’s strategy and intentions (e.g., [i30]’s ‘digital road map’ which connected the ‘hated’ existing IT with the future harnessing of cloud). Respondents reflected on how cloud has evolved over time, for example, ‘The commercial model has obviously changed massively, the way in which you can bring services online and the range and breadth of services that [hyperscalers] offer…’ [i31]. We perceived interviewees to be projecting forward and imagining a future in which services would change and need updating in line with the organization’s overall strategy. For example: ‘We plan, at least for the next five years, to open ten new sales points every year. [Cloud] provides us with the flexibility to do so quickly and without any major costs’ [i1]. We saw a similar projection of how cloud might allow employees to have ‘the ability to control the entire organization from a single device’, [i3] – something they clearly imagined important and possible in the future.

Past experiences with vendors also shaped future decisions on cloud adoption, providing evidence of mercantile temporal proximity. As [i5] underlined, ‘there was a previous experience by the CIO, who came from another company, so he knew the solution and hence we knew how the deployment will evolve’. Similarly, [i5]’s past experience created a strong sense of long-lasting collaboration which even directed future choices: ‘When you are rejecting a product or a collaborator, you have to justify why. So, the existing vendor gave us another suggestion’. In other cases, the relationships with a vendor led interviewees to consider postponing adoption until the vendor was ready. As [i1] highlighted: ‘[the vendor] are planning to move their products to the cloud at some point. So, they were trying to convince us, not to do the transition to the cloud, not to make this change… they tried to change our decision and to influence us negatively’.

Projecting forward influenced the choice of cloud provider as interviewees sought providers they expected to survive long-term: ‘who is going to be there in the future… there’s been lots of consolidation of vendors. We try our best to stay on top of that’ [i32]. The speed of change and innovation of the vendor were also a crucial temporal aspect within the cloud decision as some decision makers needed to make changes fast: ‘find good vendors who do good jobs that can accelerate the process of getting things done, because a CIO/CTO, they’re there to deliver change’ [i32]. Similarly, vendors’ ability to mature over time has also been noted: ‘things have changed markedly... And they matured considerably, even [a vendor] has matured a lot. About eight, nine years ago, [that vendor] didn’t want to talk to me except through a third-party which was crazy [given the size of my business]’[i31].

Over time in working with a customer ‘interaction changes…in some ways it becomes more intense … it’s about building those relationships for the long term’ [i36]. In this journey, you start with ‘how do you get the customer into the cloud, obviously, but that’s not modernisation, that’s just you’re in the cloud… [To do innovation] intentional contact is important. It’s that old thing about why do you meet in the office? Well, it’s getting around a whiteboard and brainstorming’ [i35].

Piloting cloud services provides an eloquent illustration of how experiencing and projecting is operationalized, in consultation with vendors (counsel aspect). Pilots allow customers to experience cloud services at a small scale while projecting their imagined future use across their organization. For example, [i2]: ‘we set up one [pilot] of our services and we did a test migration to their data centre’. Similarly, [i23] piloted multiple services at the same time: ‘[we] identified four to five [services] to install and test for a minimum of one month, by three people. All options were tested in parallel, and they were discussing and commenting on their experience frequently’. Thus, piloting facilitated diffusion of the remembering and projecting among the organization’s internal stakeholders. Alongside piloting, adopters sometimes conducted due diligence: ‘We’re also doing due diligence, meaning I’m contacting the references, the existing clients of these two vendors […] companies in similar industries to gather feedback’ [i35] examining feedback to imagine their own future risks and opportunities.

Cloud also enabled piloting across a global company. For instance, [i20] revealed that, for their candidate cloud-based CRM service, ‘we ran a pilot in the Nordics and, since the pilot was successful, we ran a second pilot before adopting for countries that are more traditional, for example, Romania. We allowed three to four months and saw how it goes’. Piloting was relevant to the temporal dimension as it allowed an understanding of evolving technological and organizational change and the relationality between these and the benefits of cloud. It connected the past with the projected future.

Beyond piloting the actual service, interviewees also reflected on past experience as evidence of how the collaboration could evolve in the future. As [i22] noted: ‘If you are happy with an existing relationship, why change it’. Similarly, [i34] noted ‘We did not request offers from vendors, we went to the existing vendors, had a discussion with them, decided it was time to upgrade, and we moved with those we knew’. Negative past counselling in terms of communication and reachability, had the opposite impact. For example, [i25] rejected a service offered because: ‘[in the past the vendor] was very difficult to communicate, every day we were talking to a different person, [we] had to explain everything from scratch. It had bad service and support’. Table 4 summarises our empirical findings on temporality.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 4.

Temporal proximity in cloud adoption.

Evidence from the interviews	Indicative interviews	Emerging proximal aspects
Scalability Cost projections Projecting on time to introduce and speed of innovation Projecting on growing data analysis requirements Technical debt (projecting cost of re-engineering existing technology) Remembering and projecting to considering organizational strategy and intentions with respect to cloud adoption (e.g., updating, remote work etc.).	[i3], [i21], [i31], [i33], [i35]	Organi-technical temporality concerns retrospective and future projections on the use of cloud technology in the organisation
Positive past experiences with vendors impacted future choices Existing relationships with vendors led to consider postponing the adoption until the vendor updates Projecting the future to look for cloud providers which would survive in the long term Projecting the future in terms of speed of the vendor (capacity to make changes fast)	[i1], [i5], [i8], [i22], [i31], [i32], [i34]	Mercantile temporality refers to how past experiences with vendors shape future decisions on cloud adoption and future relations with vendors
Projecting the use of a cloud service in the organisation through piloting at small and large scale Reflecting on past experiences with vendors to project on how they could evolve in the future Due-diligence through others to project the future experience	[i2], [i20], [i22], [i23], [i25], [i34], [i35]	Counsel temporality concerns how experiencing and projecting is operationalized in consultation with vendors

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 5.

Conceptual framework on cloud proximity. The influence of locational, relational and temporal dimensions on cloud adoption.

	Locational	Relational	Temporal
Organi-technical	Locationality of the servers and the data and their connection to the organisation	Relationship of the organisation with existing technology	Retrospective and future projections of the nature of, and use of, cloud technology by the organisation
Mercantile	Locationality of the sales team and customers	Support in identifying and selecting the desired cloud service	Retrospective and future projections of the collaboration with the vendor’s sales function
Counsel	Locationality of expertise to assist with the decision making, and the availability of expertise once the cloud service is in use	Access to trusted expertise and their ability to advise on the selection and future use of the cloud-services	Retrospective and future projections of the technology’s capacity and vendor’s capacity to assist once the cloud service is in use

Discussion

We show how our mercantile, counsel and organi-technical aspects of cloud adoption proximity lead to our conceptual framework and come into play within cloud adoption, so enhancing our understanding of cloud proximity. We then explore the theoretical and practical implications of this study.

A conceptual framework on cloud proximity

Our analysis revisits and challenges the conception of cloud as ‘remote’. We did this by employing proximity as a theoretical lens and showing how locational, relational and temporal dimensions of proximity are key dimensions of cloud adoption decision making. Thus, in making adoption decisions, cloud is not as remote, impersonal or distant as is often assumed.

These three dimensions were analysed separately but constitute complementary analytical lenses to consider the proximity of cloud and are often interrelated. For example, vendors often draw on location (e.g., participate in trade shows, visit customers etc.) specifically to develop relationships with their customers (e.g., trust, personal contact etc.), and so respond to clients’ expectations (temporal imagining and projecting). Beyond the locational, relational and temporal dimensions of proximity, our analysis reveals that each proximity dimension in the context of cloud adoption encapsulates organi-technical, mercantile and counsel aspects. Table 5 brings together our analysis of the proximal dimensions of cloud and their impact on cloud adoption and summarizes how organi-technical, mercantile and counsel aspects come into play within each dimension. The table synthesizes our insights from the proximity literature and our empirical findings in a conceptual framework for appreciating and studying cloud proximity. Our results support the argument that cloud is not ethereal, but rather that organisations hold concerns about cloud technology, similar to cloud’s predecessors; they are reflecting on the sales and support from the vendor, they seek internal and external expertise to assist in making such technology decisions; and they consider the technology’s capacity with respect to the context of the organisation’s use.

Proximity and cloud adoption: extending our understanding

Earlier in this paper, we built on the cloud definition by Mell and Grance (2011) to highlight assumptions about the ‘remoteness’ of cloud and identifying inconsistencies among research findings related to such remoteness. This led to a fresh reading of the cloud literature that questioned whether cloud is as remote and ethereal as the cloud metaphor suggests. We noted that, while several researchers draw on cloud’s remoteness to argue that cloud enables organizations to overcome the locational, relational and time boundaries experienced with previous technologies, others argue that organizations adopting cloud remain bound to location, relation and time restrictions, and question the significance of cloud’s remoteness.

Cloud research, as Wang et al. (2016) argue, is dominated by foundation-building conceptual studies. Our research contributes a distinctive qualitative and interpretive understanding of cloud adoption revealing that organisations and adopters seek to be proximal to the cloud in three different ways that have emerged from our analysis and which we have termed: Organi-technical, Mercantile and Counsel. Whereas Mercantile Proximity and Counsel Proximity emphasise the social proximity between human actors, Organi-technical Proximity emphasises the proximity of technology, and its contingency to the adopting organisation, during adoption and at the extended scale of cloud.

Theoretical contribution

While the above discussion elucidates and deepens understanding of cloud, our main contribution is in demonstrating the importance of a proximal perspective towards cloud adoption and providing a theoretical frame by which to examine such proximity. Our research shows that proximity, a ‘co-present interaction’ (Boden and Molotch 1994), is a significant factor within cloud adoption in contrast to the assumed ephemeral and distance of cloud (for example through assumptions of locational independence (Iyer and Henderson, 2010) or ‘utility’-like purchase (Carr, 2008)). Cloud adopters value proximity and close interaction.

Proximity is associated with its benefits in the absorption of knowledge (Boschma, 2005a), by assisting in identifying, interpreting and exploiting knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Its significance within cloud adoption suggests those adopting cloud value knowledge (including tacit knowledge) of cloud capabilities and benefit from learning and building communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) around cloud in support of their adoption. Technology adoption is not wholly economically rational (Mignerat and Rivard, 2009) and cloud adoption can be influenced by social factors. Yet, our research on proximity suggests the important value cloud adopters place on gaining knowledge both prior to cloud adoption (mercantile) and post cloud adoption (counsel). We speculate that this may be because cloud technology is usually generative (Lyytinen et al., 2017; Henfridsson and Bygstad, 2013) whereby its value (though innovation) is entwined with its configuration and use alongside complementary tools. Value is thus highly dependent upon the harnessing of such generative possibilities through such configuration and integration work – work which requires detailed knowledge and support.

Our research on the temporality dimension of proximity also highlighted this emphasis on growth and innovation within cloud adoption and so suggests reorientating our view of adoption away from being a staccato isolated practice towards being a more dynamic temporally entwined process. While further research on such cloud adoption processes would be welcomed, our research here indicates that cloud adoption is part of an unfolding process influenced by remembered past relationships, lock-in and institutionalised practices and projected towards future innovation. Re-orientating cloud adoption research to examine it as a continuous socio-technical transformation flow (Baygi et al., 2021) within a dynamic and relational orientation towards organisational and technological infrastructure (Faraj and Leonardi, 2022) would thus be welcomed. Indeed, the rise of multi-cloud, edge computing, IoT and polymorphous technology such as blockchain suggests the need for an increasing focus on locational, relational and temporal aspects of proximity within wider technology adoption research.

This paper is, to our knowledge, the first piece of research to address the relevance of proximity to technology adoption. As we take an interpretive stance, this approach is open for the wider research community to test its generalizability for cloud and technology adoption more broadly. With the rise of 5G, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, technology is becoming an important part of corporate strategy and organizations will have to make frequent and strategically important technology adoption decisions. Despite the often-assumed impersonality and temporal/spatial distance of new technologies (e.g., AI, Blockchain), or belief of proximity as technical feature (e.g., Robotics, IoT), further research should examine the proximity of such technology and its adoption and explore whether this influences their success. For example, does proximity of AI counsel and its organi-technical adoption influence the propensity for bias? Could a focus on relational proximity reduce the chances of organisations adopting biased AI systems? We hope that our proximal analysis of cloud adoption will generate research interest to explore this theoretical lens further in understanding such interesting questions for future technology adoption.

Practical implications

For vendors, our proximal dimensions suggest localized sales and support functions are beneficial within their marketing and sales efforts (even if they harness virtual meetings) and that the location of data is significant. Both sides should focus on closer vendor-IT department relationships and sales support and consider a broader ecosystem of consultancies and sales agents that may act as intermediaries bringing geographically ‘remote’ cloud providers and services closer. Vendors’ presence at local events enhances their potential to establish a relationship with a future customer. Local vendors can benefit from promoting their presence and locational relevance to future customers, whereas international vendors may consider opening local branches or forming alliances with companies (e.g., consultancies) in locations with a large potential client base. Further, our findings on temporal proximity highlight the need for vendors to assist adopters in evaluating their product in relation to their existing technology and their projected future intentions (and the cloud technologies future innovation).