Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary 1
2. What is Cloud Computing? 1
2.1. Service Models 1
2.2. Deployment Models 2
2.3. When Did Cloud Computing Emerge? 3
2.4. Why Businesses Use Cloud Computing? 4
2.5. Advantages and Disadvantages 4
3. Cloud Computing in the Education Sector 5
3.1. Advantages of Cloud Computing in Education 6
3.2. Applications of Cloud Computing in Education 7
3.3. Cost Reduction Benefits 9
4. Conclusion 10
References 11
1. Executive Summary
This paper was written to discuss the cloud computing in general and focuses on cloud
computing in the education sector. This report briefly defines the cloud computing, service
models, deployment models, its history, and its advantages and disadvantages.
Furthermore, this report thoroughly discusses the advantages of cloud computing in the
education sector, which include: back up, accessibility, resources and time conscious,
easiness of distributing and turning assignments, collaboration, and all format storage.
Moreover, the applications used in the education sector are discussed, which are: Google
Drive, Skydrive, Dropbox, and Moodle. The report also relays how cloud computing helps
to reduce costs in education once it is implemented.
2. What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is a model of computing in which computer processing, storage,
software, and other services are provided as a pool of virtualized resources over a network,
primarily the Internet. The importance of cloud computing appears in the cloud’s potential
to reduce investment costs in infrastructure, save time and effort in application
development and maintenance, and cut-costs on resource allocation overhead. Accessing
and demanding the cloud computing services on an as needed basis is a distinguished
feature of cloud computing. The United States National Institute of Standards and
Technology, NIST, has defined the cloud computing characteristics to have on-demand
self-service, ubiquitous network access, location independent resources pooling, rapid
elasticity, and measured services (Laudon, K. & Laudon, J.).
2.1. Service Models
Service models of cloud computing are categorized into three different services. They are
Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS) (Laudon, K. & Laudon, J.). SaaS provides the customer with applications running
on a cloud infrastructure. These applications are accessible from many devices using one
of the two options; a thin client interface, such as a web browser, or a program interface.
The consumer does not manage or control the cloud infrastructure including network,
servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities. However,
limited user-specific application configuration settings are available in some SaaS. PaaS
provides the consumer with the capability to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure
consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries,
services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control
the cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has
control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the
application-hosting environment. IaaS provides the consumer with the capability to
provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources
where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include
operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the
underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and
deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components, such
as host firewalls (Laudon, K. & Laudon, J.).
2.2. Deployment Models
The United States National Institute of Standard Technology divides cloud computing
deployment models into four categories. The four models are: private cloud, community
cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. The private cloud’s infrastructure is provisioned for
exclusive use by a single organization containing several consumers. For example,
business units may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or
some combination of both, and it may exist on or off premises. The community cloud’s
infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from
organizations that have shared concerns. For example mission, security requirements,
policy, and compliance considerations. It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or
more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them,
and it may exist on or off premises. The public cloud’s infrastructure is provisioned for
open use by the public. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic,
or government organization, or some combination of them. It exists on the premises of the
cloud provider. The hybrid cloud’s infrastructure is a composition of two or more different
cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are
linked together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application
portability, for example cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds (Laudon, K. &
Laudon, J.).
2.3. When Did Cloud Computing Emerge?
The history of cloud computing has a definition of delivering computing resources to
different locations through a global network was originally introduced in the 1960’s, from
the ideas of pioneers such as J.C.R Licklider and John McCarthy. John McCarthy believed
that computation could someday be organized through public property and could be
accessed anytime using the internet. The development of the Internet was one of the major
steps forward for cloud computing. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
(ARPANET) was developed in 1969, which was the first step in the development of the
internet. ARPANET was developed as a result of that project carried out by Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA). J.C.R Licklider and his colleagues successfully
developed ARPANET. The TCP/IP innovation made it possible to connect whole subnets
to ARPANET in 1983 (Timmermans, Ikonen, Bozdag, & Stahl, 2013). This connection of
networks came to be known as the Internet. The Internet was used first for military and
