Abstract
In the current financial crisis and being challenged by growing needs, universities are facing problems in providing necessary information technology (IT) support for educational, research and development activities. The objective of this paper is to find alternatives to the use of IT, while leading universities to improve agility and obtain savings. The research methodology consisted in a rigorous analysis of the latest research on Cloud Computing as an alternative to IT provision, management and security. It also took into account the best practices for Cloud Computing usage within universities, plus the authors’ experience in IT and higher education. The article begins with a brief introduction to Cloud Computing in universities, referring to the most important results obtained so far. Further, a starting point for universities to use Cloud Computing is provided, by proposing an adoption strategy. The strategy includes five stages, with emphasis on the evaluation of data and processes/functions/applications from several major universities based on some key criteria, while creating a correspondence between these aspects and the models/services/applications that exist on the Cloud market. The results obtained are encouraging and support the use of Cloud solutions in universities by improving knowledge in this field and providing a practical guide adaptable to the university’s structure. In order to be applicable in practice, the proposed model takes into account the university’s architecture and criteria such as mission, availability and importance of applications and also the data’s mission, sensitivity, confidentiality, integrity and availability.
Highlights
Higher education was acknowledged in time as one of the pillars of society development
Despite its critics and drawbacks, it seems that Cloud Computing is here to stay
Universities have begun to adhere to this initiative and there are proofs that indicate significant decreasing of expenses due to the implementation of cloud solutions
Summary
Higher education was acknowledged in time as one of the pillars of society development. Cloud Computing may be considered an extension of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) (Mircea et al, 2011) and an alternative to the use of IT for educational environment, especially in the conditions of the present financial crisis From this point of view it is important to identify data, services, and processes that are suitable candidates to reside in the Cloud. By including the cloud services, North Carolina State University achieved a substantially decreasing of expenses with software licensing and at the same time to reduce the campus IT staff from 15 to 3 employees with full working schedule (Wyld, 2009) Another example is Kuali Ready (Bristow et al, 2010), a community-source project chartered to provide a business continuity planning service and it is an example of higher education institutions organizing themselves to provide cloud services. Kuali Ready is a good early example of some key principles that are emerging to guide cloud developments
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