Mr Dinesh G Umale Saraswati College,Shegaon (Department of MCA) CLOUD COMPUTING IN HIGHER EDUCATION Abstract Technology has grown rapidly with scientific advancement over the world in recent decades. Therefore, there is a need to redesign the educational system to meet industrial needs better. The advent of computers with sophisticated software has made it possible to solve many complex problems very fast and at a lower cost. Almost all studies in various disciplines use computers to solve their problems. Making computers available to all users, particularly students, is difficult in developing countries. This is one of the major problems in educational institutions arising from budget constraints. Cloud computing is becoming an attractive technology due to its dynamic scalability and effective usage of the resources; it can be utilized under circumstances where the availability of resources is limited. In this paper, attention is given to possible implementation of Cloud computing technology in the educational field, especially in engineering colleges where there is intensive use of computers and software. In this research, we classified the various applications of Cloud Computing technologies in educational institutions. This paper thus describes the issues that need to be solved in order to arrive at cloud education, including integration, ownership, security and assessment, and offers a holistic approach to cloud education. It also put forward a new perspective in embedding mobile cloud education, an amalgamation between cloud-learning and mobilelearning domains, within a holistic intelligent campus environment. This essay mainly focuses on the research of the application of cloud computing in education information. Firstly, the traditional computer technologies, including the virtualization, network storage technology, distributed computing, parallel computing technology, network technology and automation techniques etc Keyword: IAAS PAAS, SAAS, server virtualization. Introduction The 21st Century Vision of Cloud Computing The advancement of modern society, basic essential services (utilities) are commonly provided such that everyone can easily obtain access to them. Today, utility services, such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony are deemed necessary for fulfilling daily life routines. These utility services are accessed so frequently that they need to be available whenever the consumer requires them at any time. Consumers are then able to pay service providers based on their usage of these utility services. Cloud computing is a technology that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth. Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: 1
"Application" "Storage" and "Connectivity." Each segment serves a different Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS), Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) and Software-as-a-Service (SAAS). The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol purpose and offers different products for businesses and individuals around the world. A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services. A simple example of cloud computing is Yahoo email, Gmail, or Hotmail etc. You don t need software or a server to use them. All a consumer would need is just an internet connection and you can start sending emails. The server and email management software is all on the cloud (internet) and is totally managed by the cloud service provider Yahoo, Google etc. Cloud Computing Architecture Fig 1 Cloud Computing Architecture Service Models:- 1. Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) 2. Platform as a Service (PAAS) 3. Software as a Service (SAAS) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS): Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) like Amazon Web Services provides virtual servers with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Customers benefit from an API from which they can control their servers. Because customers can pay for exactly the amount of service they use, like for electricity or water, this service is also called utility computing. 2
Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS): Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) is a set of software and development tools hosted on the provider's servers. Developers can create applications using the provider's APIs. Google Apps is one of the most famous Platform-as-a-Service providers. Developers should take notice that there aren't any interoperability standards (yet), so some providers may not allow you to take your application and put it on another platform. Software-as-a-Service (SAAS): Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) is the broadest market. In this case the provider allows the customer only to use its applications. The software interacts with the user through a user interface. These applications can be anything from web based email, to applications like Twitter Server Virtualization: Virtualization is a method of running multiple independent virtual operating systems on a single physical computer. Virtualization, in computing, is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources. A virtual organization is a collection of people and resources that work in a coordinated way to achieve a common goal. To use grid facilities, any user must subscribe to a virtual organization as a member. Each people or resource can be a member of more virtual organizations at the same time and each virtual organization can contain people or resources belonging to different administration domains. Server virtualization is the masking of server resources, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. The server administrator uses a software application to divide one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. The virtual environments are sometimes called virtual private server. Virtual machines are based on the host/guest paradigm. Each guest runs on a virtual imitation of the hardware layer. This approach allows the guest operating system to run without modifications. It also allows the administrator to create guests that use different operating systems. Fig 2 Server Virtualization 3
Types of Cloud: Fig3 Types of Cloud computing Private Cloud: Private clouds describe offerings that deploy cloud computing on private network. it consists of application or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. they provide the benefits of utility computing, shared hardware costs the ability to recover from failure and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand. Public cloud: A Public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.public or external cloud computing where resources are dynamically provisioned on a finegrained self -service basis over the internet or via and from an offsite third -party provider who bills on a fine -grained basis. Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. It can also be defined as multiple cloud systems that are connected in a way that allows programs and data to be a moved easily from one deployment system to another. Cloud Computing in Higher Education Higher education was acknowledged in time as one of the pillars of society development. Through the partnerships between universities, government and industry, researchers and students have proven their contribution to the transformation of society and the entire world economy The tendency observed during the last few years within the higher education level is the universities transition to research universities and ongoing update of the IT (Information Technology) infrastructure as foundation for educational activities and Science research. With the evolution of technology, the number of services which migrate from traditional form to the online form grows as well. For these specific services, an adequate providing form must be found in the online environment. 4
The potential and efficiency of using Cloud Computing in higher education has been recognized by many universities. In addition, cloud solutions can be used to support cooperative learning and social oriented theories of learning, using computer technologies to support collaborative methods of instruction. Cloud computing offers many benefits to e- learning solutions by providing the infrastructure, platform and educational services directly through cloud providers and by using virtualization, centralized data storage and facilities for data access monitoring. In order to ensure success in e-learning, universities use metrics systems adapted to measure the effectiveness of e-learning solutions based on the cloud. Currently, there are many practices and examples regarding the use of cloud computing. For instance, in Commonwealth, many colleges and universities had collaborated at the formation of Virtual Computing Lab. This allowed institutions both to cut down IT expenses (by reducing the necessities of licensing and software updating) and to maintain its own data centres, as well as to improve IT resources for researches and students. The Cloud Computing solution will allow to all categories of users access to stored files, e- mail, database and other applications from anywhere at request, which leads to a more efficient use of information. This represents a transition from remote services offered to users in the traditional version to assuring some selfservice systems, which is beneficial in the Cloud Computing perspective. The objective is to identify the emergent technologies, efficient from the point of view of costs that satisfy the necessities of the students and university staff. The hardware and software needs shall then be analyzed from the perspective of the three cloud models (figure 4). Fig 5 Cloud Implementation in Education Features of cloud computing in higher education with respect to on-demand SAAS, PAAS, and IAAS: 1. Increasing access to scarce IT expertise and talent. 2. Scaling IT services and resources. 3. Promoting further IT standardization. 4. Accelerating time to market through IT supply bottleneck reductions. 5. Channeling or countering the ad hoc consumerization of enterprise IT services. 6. Facilitating the transparent matching of IT costs, demand and funding. 7. Increasing interoperability between disjoint technologies within and between institutions. 5
8. Supporting a model of a 24 x 7 x 365 environment. 9. Enabling the sourcing of cycles and storage powered by renewable energy. 10. Driving down capital and total costs of IT in higher education. Benefit of Cloud Computing Solutions for Higher Education Google Apps and Microsoft provide educational institutions free computing solutions for students to communicate and collaborate with peers and teachers, and with their institutions even after they have graduated and left. They both help institutions to meet the promises of cloud computing. Microsoft Education Software Solutions Microsoft s Solutions is a comprehensive, powerful combination of Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010, Windows Live Essentials, Live@ edu, and Office 365 for Education. Typical benefits to educational institutions include: Access to Outlook e-mail, contacts, and calendars. Possibility for file sharing between students, educators, and staff. Ability to create and share photo albums and movies with Windows Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Convenient storage, access, and sharing for documents, photos, and Microsoft Office files on Windows Live Sky Drive, with 25 GB of free storage; Increased efficiency in productivity software such as Microsoft Office programs with the latest updates (without having to buy new hardware and software or pay for maintenance and configurations) Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote; Student and staff-access to the latest Office updates via any browser for viewing, sharing, and simple editing of documents. Google Apps for Education Google Apps is a free user friendly suite of tools that includes Gmail and Google Docs for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to meet the needs of organizations of any size. Gmail: An e-mail app based on Google s popular Gmail platform. Calendar: A calendar and scheduling app that allows easy collaboration. Talk: Instant messaging, available directly from within Gmail or as a standalone software application. Talk also allows voice calls, voice mail, and file sharing. Google Docs: A simple, yet powerful, set of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation apps. Google Docs allows true collaboration and sharing of learning. The Start Page: An app that you can personalize by adding gadgets to access any or all of the other Google Apps, as well as news, weather reports, entertainment information, and more from one place. 6
Challenges for Cloud computing Cloud computing is still relatively a new and is undergoing an evolutionary process. Though it is appealing, it has benefits and risks which need to be finely balanced. Data security and privacy are major issues. As a result, some organizations might hesitate to be its early adopter. Being an emerging technology, cloud computing is currently not a solution for all organizations that require high level of data security and privacy. Conclusion The huge cost of new and emerging technologies is a major barrier to many educational institutions around the world especially at this time of crippling economic downturn to tap the educational potential of educational technology. However, with the promise of cost effectiveness and continually improving technical performance, cloud computing is becoming a choice for many higher education institutions for meeting their large scale demands of technology. Indications are that cloud computing will revolutionize enterprise IT; it will ultimately garner serious considerations from higher education institutions and will undoubtedly drive agility and cost savings to new heights, thus helping higher education to transform in an unprecedented way. It could become a practical strategy to address the challenge of widening access to higher education. References:- [1] L. Kleinrock. A vision for the Internet. ST Journal of Research, 2(1):4-5, Nov. 2005. [2] I. Foster and C. Kesselman (eds). The Grid: Blueprint for a Future Computing Infrastructure. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, USA, 1999. [3] Rajkumar Buyya, Srikumar Venugopal Cloud Computing and Emerging IT Platforms: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering Computing as the 5th Utility. 7