  Cloud computing is a new paradigm and innovation in the technology service
delivery. It is utilized for IT-enabled value creation. The capex-free nature
of cloud service delivery renders it very attractive to many SMEs. But it is
saddled with multi-tenancy issues; prominent under this study are concerns of
privacy, trust and availability. How do end-users trust providers with their
sensitive data? How secured and confidential are their corporate assets? Amidst
the perennial power outages (a.k.a. Dumsor), what is the acceptable available
uptime? We sampled and interviewed cloud service providers (CSPs) as well as
end-users in Ghana, a developing economy. We also gleaned through some
secondary data to ascertain some operational concerns. The results indicate
that security and service level agreements (SLAs) are key concerns in respect
of privacy and trust issues. Similarly, perennial power outages and security
were key availability concerns. This was expected as end-users use cloud
services for mission critical information assets, and so requires high
availability. The implications are that the cyber-security concerns ought to be
addressed if SMEs in developing economies are to adopt and accept cloud
computing resources for IT-enabled competitive advantage.
