### Nationwide Context of SME Digitalization: Montenegro  
In addition to the crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, countries worldwide have recently faced political, economic, and social obstacles specific to their region. For example, Montenegro, along with other Western Balkan countries, has been in the process of joining the European Union for several years and is reported to be a leader in that process [52]. However, several political and economic obstacles still create and determine a low level of social and economic development. This is well manifested in in the social (failed reforms, weak legal basis, poverty), political (lack of democracy, street protests), and economic (underdevelopment, high unemployment) spheres [52; 53]. Montenegro's goals and visions are to ensure that it conforms to the various EU policies on digitalization and technological advancement in its attempts to become economically and politically equal to other countries [54]. Hence, investments have been made in the development of e-government and digital skills, in building trust and digital security, the digitalization of industry, as well as in the adoption, implementation, and enforcement of the Digital Single Market acquis [55; 56]. The starting points in the process can be found in national strategic documents, like the Strategy for the Development of the Information Society of Montenegro until 2020 [57], which identified cloud computing as a potential direction for ICT development in Montenegro, as well as the World Bank's definition of cloud computing: According to Economic Report No. 73826-ME [58], Montenegro was preparing for prosperity within the \"Platform for Development and Innovations\". However, one of the significant aspects that has attributed to making Montenegro particularly relevant for the study is a cybersecurity attack on governmental e-services in the year 2022. This attack resulted in the disruption of activity ranging from 3 to 9 months, which consequently raised concerns about the security of digital processes. The multi-day attack, which began on 22 August 2022, affected government servers and critical infrastructure, making website and emails unavailable. This one was the most extensive in scope and resulted in significant damage. In specific sectors, the energy sector and the finance sector experienced a greater impact. To overcome this issue of decline in the tax system, the state introduced the concept of the offline mode of operation. Due to the cyber threat to the state's power system, the utility company Elektroprivreda had to temporarily suspend some of its services and transitioned them to manual operations to mitigate potential harm [59]. Therefore, it is essential to examine the factors that may have driven Montenegrin SMEs to potentially affect their intent to adopt CC over time and identify the differences that may have occurred in the recent period (2017-2023), the time between initial tangible steps towards digitalization and the quite unstable post-COVID-19 pandemic time, coupled with a significant cyberattack that paralyzed e-services, along with other global and national events and trends. However, it is also important to understand any changes that may have occurred in the perception of the benefits and risks of CC adoption before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. However, studies reported in the literature have not taken into empirical consideration the long-term impacts of the unique political, economic, security, and social settings during the past five years on the digitalization of SMEs in terms of CC adoption. It was thus the main aim of our study to investigate more thoroughly and systematically how the reasons for, perceived benefits of, and risks of CC adoption have changed in recent years in Montenegrin SMEs and which factors have led to these changes. A quantitative study was conducted in 2017 and repeated in 2023 when a semi-structured interview was also employed to reinforce and elaborate the quantitative results and explain the quantitative findings.