## 1 Introduction  
Cloud computing is one of the major emergent paradigms in information systems research and practice. Attracted by the promise of information technology (IT) efficiencies and increased business agility, enterprises are incorporating cloud computing in their IT strategies [1]. Despite the extensive literature on the benefits of cloud computing, our understanding of cloud computing adoption decisions is marred by inconsistencies on the influence of a myriad of organizational, technological, environmental, and human factors [2; 3; 4; 5; 6], which vary by situational context [7; 8; 9]. Thus, in highly complex and under researched contexts such as high performance computing (HPC), there is a need for research that elucidates the role of the various organizational, technological, environmental, and human factors. Advances in the design of higher performance processors, functional accelerators, interconnects, and associated software have resulted in increasingly powerful computers often referred to as supercomputing or HPC [10]. HPC can be defined as the coordinated use of massive parallel architectures for the solution of a single problem and are characterized by the scale of compute power required to process a job quickly [11]. HPC-oriented problems are typically computationally and data intensive simulation and analytics problems [12]. Such advanced computing is costly in terms of upfront capital investment and direct and indirect operational expenditure as HPC requires significant energy and expertise to operate [10]. Due to the cost of HPC, it is unsurprising that HPC is commonly used in automotive and aerospace product development, oil and gas exploration, genomics and drug discovery, weather prediction and climate modeling, 3D image rendering, and complex financial modeling [12]. Thus, access to HPC infrastructure has typically been limited to large mature organizations, government research centers or agencies, and universities [12]. HPC represents a small but high value segment of the ICT market [12, 13]. Indeed, a 2015 IDC report for the European Commission highlights the importance of HPC: \"The use of high performance computing (HPC) has contributed significantly and increasingly to scientific progress, industrial competitiveness, national and regional security, and the quality of human life. HPC is important for national and regional economies--and for global ICT collaborations in which Europe participates--because HPC, also called supercomputing, has been firmly linked to accelerating innovation\" [12]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [10] note that large-scale commercial cloud computing infrastructures share common scales with large-scale HPC systems with both services driven by cost, reliability, and energy efficiency imperatives. However, they also note important differences. For HPC, performance is key [10], but the emphasis in cloud computing is on scalability, in this case horizontal scaling through the addition of more machines, in contrast to vertical scaling in HPC. Furthermore, recent research has highlighted the potential for cloud computing to overcome many of the issues associated with high performance computing by increasing flexibility and efficiency, and reducing costs [14, 15, 16]. HPC infrastructure has traditionally been unavailable to many organizations due to its high cost and the specialized technical knowledge required to configure and maintain such infrastructure [17]. In line with [PERSON] and [PERSON] [18], we posit that HPC in the cloud allows organizations, particularly small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), to access HPC infrastructure on a more cost-effective basis and, as a result, better compete by overcoming internal constraints to generate new capabilities, enter new markets, adopt new resources, and develop new products.