In a challenging business environment, organizations are striving to stay competitive. Cloud computing is changing the way IT services is being provided and managed. Cloud computing is becoming more relevant in that the benefits of cloud computing include reducing infrastructure and maintenance costs, increasing operational efficiencies, availability and flexibility. However, like any other technology, both strategically and operationally, the organizations are not very confident in adoption and using it. Therefore, in an attempt to help South African organizations to leverage off the benefits of cloud computing. This paper focuses on how cloud computing may be strategically adopted and use in South Africa from the context of individual Information Technology Professionals. To achieve these South African organizations require a means to adopt and use cloud computing. To this point, the contribution of this paper is a framework, based on Contingency Theory, Stakeholder Theory and Technology-Organization-Environment Framework (TOE), that South African organization can use to strategically position cloud computing as preferred technology in a uniformed and coordinated manner. This study applies interpretivism philosophy and case study to understand the cloud computing adoption and use in South African organizations. The study participants were purposefully selected based on their knowledge, experience and views on cloud computing. The main contribution of this paper is the strategic cloud computing framework that can be used by decision-makers to strategically adopt and use cloud computing in a uniformed and coordinated manner in South African organizations.

Keywords : Cloud Computing, Stakeholder, Contingency, TOE Framework, South Africa, IT Professionals