Adopting cloud computing for SZU
Adopting cloud computing for SZU (Sheikh Zayed University)
Introduction
Cloud computing is a model which provide services according to the end user demands. Cloud computing is referred to the use of remote servers which are hosted on the internet in order to store, process and manipulate data, in this the services are delivered over the internet. Cloud computing has become of particular consideration due to its high computing power, cost effectiveness, high performance, scalability, accessibility, availability and reliability 1. Cloud computing is also called Internet computing, is the process to provide services and resources from the cloud online on the Internet from anywhere at any time. In order to store data, it uses completely secure datacenters which appears as a cloud 1. In the past few years the cloud computing and visualization has become very famous in the field of information technology. Cloud computing is now entered to the different portions of the society such as in education. Without modern information technology it is impossible to train students specially in technical institutions. But as universities have limited budgets and cannot afford updating computer IT infrastructure and also the costs of software used to keep students information, so they can adopt cloud computing which can reduce their software and hardware costs, application programs used during the training as well. There are different Cloud Services Providers such as google and Microsoft which provide E-mail services and storing of private documents, this results in good functionality in university system 2.
Cloud Service Provider generally provide three types of services such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS which will be describe in this portion of the paper. SaaS in this model, the user runs Cloud applications directly on local computer through a web browser without installing and con?guring it on his local computer. Cloud user accesses applications in the Cloud and is not supposed to manage and maintain the infrastructure and platform on which user applications are hosted and run. salesforce.com, Google Mail, Google Docs are example of SaaS. 34. Second, PaaS (platform as a services) Cloud provider o?ers a platform and IDE to the customers to develop and run their own applications. In this model, the user is allowed to manage self-created applications but not the infrastructure. The users of the platform as service normally has programming skills. Dynamically scaling a storage resource to match user applications demand is a property of Cloud Computing and the user is not needed to manually allocate any resources 3. Third, IaaS (infrastructure as a services) Customers of the Cloud Computing are allowed to take advantage of IT infrastructure containing processing power, storage capability, network bandwidth and other computing 3 The idea of virtualization is used in IaaS model. Amazon web services including Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Elastic Compute Cloud are examples of IaaS Cloud 3
The deployment model of cloud computing includes Public cloud, Private cloud, community cloud and the hybrid cloud.
Benefits of cloud computing in university
Cloud computing is a new technology nowadays and growing rapidly day by day, cloud computing is much needed in education’s area. I would like to mention some benefits of cloud computing here.
1 Availability: cloud computing will provide services 24/7 without any concerns, there will be no delay to make you ambiguous for the cloud computing services. Cloud computing allows students taking online courses, taking examinations, sending feedback, projects and homework anytime anywhere from any accessible devices like PDA, PC, Laptop, mobile etc. If they have access to the internet. 2,3
2 Cost effective: cloud computing is going to mitigate cost for Hardware maintenance, Hardware improvement and hardware reforming, besides that cloud computing could affect your devices’ life cycle as you need to upgrade and update them and also educational institutes need to have software support so the following cloud computing references would affect your software cost and support correctly, such as Google Apps for educational institutes or Live@edu is that the using of cloud providers, SaaS solutions is low cost then providing the necessity- services itself.2
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implementing cloud computing in SZU (Sheikh Zayed University)
conclusion
Reference:
1 Security Threats in Cloud Computing and their Countermeasures.
2IT-infrastructure of university based on cloud computing.
3 Cloud Computing Benefits for Educational Institutions.
