ADOPTION OF SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE: A FUZZY APPROACH TO RANKING THE DETERMINANTS

Abstract

‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) holds various benefits for organisations; however, SaaS solutions are not enjoying widespread adoption in South Africa. Hence, to improve the competitiveness of South African organisations, this study ranked SaaS adoption factors according to their influence on a SaaS adoption decision. This novel approach from a South African perspective implemented an integrated adoption model with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with linguistic preference relations (LinPreRa). The top five adoption factors were found to be trust, relative advantage, security risk, complexity, and trialability. Implications for researchers, vendors, and end-users are also discussed.