Abstract
Teaching today relies a great deal on IT resources which require large investments and there are many higher institutions that cannot afford such investments. Educational institutions usually search for opportunities to better manage their resources, especially after the economic crisis, which has resulted in reducing government support, especially in western countries. It is argued that ‘cloud computing’ is one of those opportunities for any educational institution due to its benefits in terms of cost reduction. Today, ‘cloud computing’ can be seen as one of the latest dynamic services in the IT world because of its flexibility. This paper investigates the financial incentives for adopting cloud computing in higher educational institutions. To achieve this objective the research employs a qualitative method to collect the data. Interviews were conducted with a number of cloud service providers, experts in the field and users/potential users of the cloud. The results reveal that cloud computing drives down up-front and on-going costs, and that the number of IT staff can be reduced if the cloud is adopted. Disaster recovery and business continuity are other cost-savings areas for an educational institute in adopting the cloud, and cloud computing provides low cost testing and a development environment solution.
Highlights
Higher educational institutions have been facing more demands for extra technology services, but managing these demands is not an easy task (Alenezi et al, 2015; Tarhini et al, 2016; Alalwan et al, 2016)
A study conducted by Wood et al (2010) compared the costs of running disaster recovery (DR) services using the public cloud with those of privately owned resources, and the results showed that the cost reductions increased by 85% through taking advantage of cloud resources (Wood et al, 2010)
Cloud computing is a solution for higher educational institutions that suffer from improper infrastructure and/or lack of funds
Summary
Higher educational institutions have been facing more demands for extra technology services, but managing these demands is not an easy task (Alenezi et al, 2015; Tarhini et al, 2016; Alalwan et al, 2016). Cloud computing is known as a model that provides on-demand services, infrastructure, and application software over the network (Sultan, 2010; Almajali et al, 2016). Cloud computing is a new technology which provides users with storing, sharing, accessing and controlling data online in an effective manner (Yadav et al, 2014; Maqableh et al, 2014). Cloud computing is not exclusive to the business world; it makes a huge difference in the educational world (Al-lawati & Al-Badi, 2016; Al-Qirim et al, 2017). A number of higher institutions have already adopted it or are considering doing so
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