Technology has proven to be a pivotal factor that helps to drive organizational effectiveness, because it helps to automate processes, improve speed of data processing, enhance organizational performance and ensure ease of exchange of information across the organization. One of such emerging technologies that is fast shaping the organizational landscape is cloud computing; and this research focused on the relevance of this technology to the oil and gas sector, the benefits, risks and analysing how the implications of adopting this technology can be addressed. Also, it has been established that adopting cloud based solutions is related to outsourcing, and this implies that another firm (cloud provider) will manage the function or process that is migrated to the cloud. Therefore, this research is important within the Oil and gas sector because the success of adopting this technology in the sector is based on how these companies can manage the diverse inter-firm relationships with cloud providers. To draw new insights, relational view approach was applied to gain the understanding of how managing these relationships can ensure successful adoption of the technology because existing literatures lack in-depth discussion on how organizations can manage multiple cloud deployments (especially in the Oil sector). Furthermore, the research aimed at understanding the current state of cloud deployment in this sector, determine the most suitable deployment model(s), and strategies for effective adoption, taking cognizance of the complexity of the operations within the industry. This research focused on the Nigerian Oil industry as the research setting for gathering data for this research. This is important because this sector is the major source of revenue for Government in Nigeria and any approach that helps in achieving performance improvement will automatically translate into more benefits for the country and other stakeholders in the sector. In view of this, this research was conducted qualitatively by conducting interviews for participants within the Nigerian Oil and gas sector. These participants cut across Oil exploration and production companies, Cloud providers, and Government/Regulator agencies. The data gathering was focused on understanding the extent of adoption within the sector, current usage of this technology (if any), implications, how the transitioning is being coordinated and risk and strategies currently being deployed. The findings of this research show a low level of adoption of cloud solutions, despite the moderate level of awareness of this technology. This low level of adoption was premised on some factors ranging from the conservative culture in the industry, infrastructure challenges (peculiar with Nigeria), suitability of cloud solutions for specific core oil and gas operations, security and confidentiality concerns, lack of suitable corporate strategies, regulatory concerns, just to mention a few. This research analysed these findings critically and proposed the need for corporate strategy, effective stakeholder collaboration and management and how to adopt suitable governance framework. Furthermore, the need for National cloud policy and how to address infrastructure challenges which are inhibiting cloud adoption in the research area (Nigeria) were also addressed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:722079 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Toluwase, Tominiyi Oluwaleke |
| Publisher | University of Liverpool |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3007431/ |
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