Exploring Policy-Formulation for SMEs in Cloud Computing: The Case of Turkey

The promise of competitiveness that clouds offer to enterprises creates a substantial part of the cloud phenomenon. 2010 European Union report on cloud computing identifies the strong commercial nature of clouds and addresses new policies and actions for the competitiveness of European industry. Today, European Union attributes competitiveness to the smart growth of SMEs. The concept of smart growth is based on effective policies that foster innovation and capability to adopt the dynamics of information society. This paper aims at exploring the policy-making methods for cloud computing that will serve to enhance the competitiveness of SMEs. It analyses the dynamics of Turkish policy-making and discusses the role of EU policies in a candidate country as the motivators of migration to clouds. It is an output of an ongoing research on cloud computing in Turkey. This paper contributes to the literature as being one of the first studies on policy-making for cloud computing. It provides a twofold policy tool proposed for policy-makers. First, it identifies the dynamics of policy-making by adapting the model of Van Schendelen’s general categories of decision buttons for EU lobbying to the Turkish policy-making mechanisms. Secondly, it detects the main patterns of cloud computing policy under five priority areas as a check list for policy-makers.