Why cloud computing

CLOUD COMPUTING IN EDUCATION 

Alhaj Yusif Amadu

Cloud computing is a new technology that has changed or shift the paradigm of computing specifically in education. The cloud computing is as secure as your bank account. Companies offering these computing services are called cloud providers and typically charge for cloud computing services based on usage, similar to how you are billed for water or electricity at home Cloud providers are companies who provide computing services and charge for cloud computing services they provide based on usage, just like billed for electricity, gas or water at home.

The advent of technology has greatly impacted industry development to the extent of affecting the most traditional systems like education. The educational sector has transmogrified over the last few years following the general change of people habits and the worlds job market structure. The emergence of cloud computing technology has taken the worldwide classrooms by storm and reshaped most of the processes related to learning, teaching and administration. With its built-in elasticity and scalability for delivering on-demand information technology (IT) services to users in a pay-per-use basis, Cloud computing has emerged as an Internet-based computing paradigm. Thus, it acts as the epicenter of business developments and existing IT technologies (i.e. Virtualization, Grid Computing, Utility Computing, and Web Services).

Unfortunately, there is abundance of definitions for “cloud computing” in the literature, with hype and divergent viewpoints, leading to a non-standard definition. The “U.S” National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition is adopted. NIST defines cloud computing as a ‟model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models”

There are basically three service models or types of cloud computing, where in all models the consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or applications. The three service models are:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Compute, storage, networking, and other elements (security, tools) are provided by the IaaS provider via public Internet, VPN, or dedicated network connection. Users own and manage operating systems, applications, and information running on the infrastructure and pay by usage (“Pay-as-you-go”). The best-known examples are Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Office365 which provide communication and office applications such as email and spreadsheets.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): In the PaaS models, cloud providers deliver a computing platform, typically including operating system, programming-language execution environment, database, and web server. Application developers can develop and run their software solutions on a cloud platform without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. On a lighter note, one needs to remember the traditional computing model where each application managed locally required hardware, an operating system, a database, middleware, Web servers, and other software. One also needs to remember the team of network, database, and system management experts that are needed to keep everything up and running. With cloud computing, these services are now provided remotely by cloud providers under this layer. Examples of PaaS include Microsoft's Azure Services Platform (Microsoft, 2012), Salesforce's Force.com development platform, Google Apps Engine, Amazon's Relational Database Services and Rackspace Cloud services.

Software as a Service (SaaS): In the software as a service (SaaS) model, users gain access to application software and databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms that run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software" and is usually priced on a pay-per-use basis or using a subscription fee. In the SaaS model, cloud providers install and operate application software in the cloud and cloud users access the software from cloud clients. For example, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud; organizations can use this infrastructure to run Linux servers on virtual machines and scale up usage as required.

References

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http://www.ijircce.com/upload/2014/february/21_Role.pdf