Cloud Computing in Education: Make India Better with the Emerging Trends

Sunita Manro1, Jagmohan Singh2, and Rajan Manro3

Computer Science Department, PIMT, Mandi Gobindgarh, India 2 Computer Science Department, SBBSIET VPO Padhiana, Jalandhar, India 3 Computer Science Department, DBIMCS, Mandi Gobindgarh, India {sunitamanro,jagmohan08,rajanmanro}@gmail.com
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Abstract. The objective of this paper is to study the impact of cloud computing on the modern education. Further, the study also attempts to answer whether the services of cloud computing are significant in the education sector. Education institutions are under increasing pressure to deliver more for less, and they need to find ways to offer rich, affordable services and tools. Both public and private institutions can use the cloud to deliver better services, even as they work with fewer resources. By sharing IT services in the cloud, your educational institution can outsource noncore services and better concentrate on offering students, teachers, faculty, and staff the essential tools to help them succeed. Keywords: Cloud, Education, Public, Service, Virtualization.

1 Overview
Cloud Computing is the use of common software, functionality or business applications from a remote server that is accessed via the Internet. Basically, the Internet is the "cloud" of applications and services that are available for access by subscribers utilizing a modem from their computer. With Cloud Computing, one simply logs into desired computer applications - such as sales force or office automation programs, web services, data storage services, spam filtering, or even blog sites. Generally, access to such programs is by monthly or annual paid subscription. Through Cloud Computing, businesses may prevent financial waste, better track employee activities, and avert technological headaches such as computer viruses, system crashes, and loss of data. When computers are used in education, this will be another medium of teaching other than chalkboard. The integration of computers change the whole ecology of a school. The typical school has 1 computer per 20 students, a ratio that computer educators feel is still not high enough to affect classroom learning as much as books and classroom conversation.

A. Mantri et al. (Eds.): HPAGC 2011, CCIS 169, pp. 131139, 2011. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

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Fig. 1.

Computers are a new and exciting part of education and learning. They have changed the how student learn, study, and do assignments. Furthermore they have changed the way teachers teach. Every day in computers innovations are made that will improve how computers can be used by educators and students alike. The most basic way that computers help students is through word processing. It also gives students the ability to be creative and add pictures, highlight, underline, and use different fonts. In some classrooms the teachers use computers to compound what they teach. Computers can be used as projectors, to run programs, or simply to print out information quickly. Use of the internet is also now part of the modern classroom. There are many tutorial programs available. They are excellent in helping students hone their skills at home. These programs are for the most part affordable and have a wide range of topics. Internet access is arguably the best form of computer innovations. Students and teachers alike can use the internet to do research. Furthermore teachers and students can use it to communicate or to send papers. The use of cloud computing in case of education has certain features like: 1. Computers improve both teaching and student achievement. 2. Computer literacy should be taught as early as possible; otherwise students will be left behind. 3. Technology programs leverage support from the business community - badly needed today because schools are increasingly starved for funds. 4. To make tomorrow's work force competitive in an increasingly high-tech world, learning computer skills must be a priority. 5. Work with computers - particularly using the Internet - brings students valuable connections with teachers, other schools and students, and a wide network of professionals around the globe. Those connections spice the school day with a sense of real-world relevance, and broaden the educational community.

2 Categories of Cloud Computing

The rapid improvement of the capacity of online connectivity gave birth to cloud computing. Although the term was already used since the 90's, the actual adoption of

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cloud computing in relation to online computing started in the 21st century. Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. Cloud Computing can be broadly classified into three *aaS, i.e., three layers of Cloud Stack, also known as Cloud Service Models or SPI Service Model. These services are broadly divided into three categories: a) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): This is the base layer of the cloud stack. It serves as a foundation for the other two layers, for their execution. The keyword behind this stack is Virtualization. Amazon EC2 is a good example of an IaaS. In Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) your application will be executed on a virtual computer (also known as an instance). You have your choice of virtual computer, meaning that you can select a configuration of CPU, memory and storage that is optimal for your application. The IaaS provider supplies the whole cloud infrastructure viz. servers, routers, hardware based load-balancing, firewalls, storage and other network equipment. The customer buys these resources as a service on an as needed basis. Infrastructure as a Service is a provision model in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The client typically pays on a per-use basis. There are following characteristics and components of IaaS: Utility computing service and billing model: (charges per usage) Automation of administrative tasks. Dynamic scaling. Desktop virtualization: (multiple networks, centrally located server.) Policy-based services. Internet connectivity.

The whole cloud infrastructure, including servers, routers, hardware based load-balancing, firewalls, storage and other network equipment, is provided by the IaaS provider. IaaS delivers computer and web infrastructure through virtualization. b) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): IaaS delivers computer and web infrastructure through virtualization. But all this infrastructure is of no use without a platform. This post continues the series. Here well discuss the middle layer of Cloud Stack, i.e., PaaS (Platform as a Service).This middle layer of cloud is consumed mainly by developers or tech savvy individuals. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a way to rent hardware, operating systems, storage and network capacity over the Internet. There are following Characteristics of Paas include: Operating system features can be changed and upgraded frequently. Geographically distributed development teams can work together on software development projects. Services can be obtained from diverse sources that cross international boundaries. Initial and ongoing costs can be reduced by the use of infrastructure services from a single vendor rather than

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maintaining multiple hardware facilities that often perform duplicate functions or suffer from incompatibility problems. Overall expenses can also be minimized by unification of programming development efforts.

c)

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet. SaaS is becoming an increasingly prevalent delivery model as underlying technologies that support Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) mature and new developmental approaches, such as Ajax, become popular. SaaS is closely related to the ASP (application service provider) and On Demand Computing software delivery model.There are following Characteristics of the SaaS : easier administration automatic updates and patch management (acquiring, testing, and installing multiple patches (code)) compatibility: All users will have the same version of software. easier collaboration global accessibility.

The traditional model of software distribution, in which software is purchased for and installed on personal computers, is sometimes referred to as software as a product.

3 Services of Cloud Computing in India: 21st Century Power House

India, the 2nd fastest growing economy has mesmerized the world with its stunningly high economic growth rate since last 2 decades. A World Bank report has projected that in 2010, the rate of growth of India's economy would be faster than the currently fastest growing economy (i.e. China). What does this mean for SMBs, PSUs, MNCs or any business entity based in India? Last 5 years have seen Indian companies on a buying spree, resulting in acquiring many big & small overseas companies. In brief, Indian companies, sitting on a huge cash piles, are ready to rapidly scale up in their niche. Interestingly, India is a global leader in providing IT services but the implementation of IT in its burgeoning domestic market is still lagging. This may be a boon in disguise as they have an opportunity to lap up the latest Cloud Computing technologies. Currently, most of the companies are start-ups and are nowhere near the global giants like Amazon, Google, Salesforce or Microsoft but they have the potentials to compete with these giants in near future. Heres the list of India based Cloud Computing Service Providers, in random order.

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a) Zenith InfoTech (Location: Mumbai, India; Cloud Offering: PROUD; Type: IaaS): An IT product development and innovation company. With an investment of INR 175-crore, this is considered as Indias one of the most ambitious R&D efforts in IT. The company is expecting 2,000 - 3,000 clients of Proud in next 2 years. b) Wolf Frameworks (Location: Bangaluru, India; Cloud Offering: Wolf PaaS;Type: PaaS): Founded in 2006, it provides affordable cloud service with 99.97% Service Level Assurance. Wolf is a browser based On Demand Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for rapidly designing and delivering database driven multi-tenant Software-as-aService (SaaS) applications. c) OrangeScape (Location: Chennai, India; Cloud Offering: OrangeScape; Type: PaaS): The experience of building business applications of varying complexity across industries has made OrangeScape the most comprehensive PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering in the market. You can transform your idea into a SaaS application and can showcase them to your investors, partners and potential customers. It has an impressive list of customers viz. Ford, Pfizer, Geojit, Sify etc. d) TCS (Location: India; Cloud Offering: ITaaS; Type: IaaS+SaaS): ITaaS is a Nano in software. ITaaS framework is a one-stop shop for total end-to-end IT and hardware solutions. It includes hardware, network, bandwidth & business software. Currently ITaaS is available for 5 sectors: Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Education and Professional Services. e) Cynapse India (Location: Mumbai;Cloud Offering: Cyn.in;Type: IaaS + on Demand SaaS): Cyn.in on demand is a cloud hosted service and is the quickest way to get your own cyn.in server, without the hassles of having to set it up. With a Cyn.in on-demand system, you get a dedicated virtual server running a Cyn.in appliance that is maintained & updated by Cynapse and hosted by Amazon, ensuring an infrastructure-free and worry-free Cyn.in experience. f) Wipro Technologies (Location: India;Cloud Offering: Wipro w-SaaS; Type: SaaS): Wipro has built w-SaaS, a platform for rapid SaaS enablement and deployment on cloud, using some of the commonly accepted trends in software engineering and open standards. Wipro chose Oracle (Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Application Server and Oracle VM) as the deployment platform for w-SaaS enabled applications. The software vendor can deploy the same application on-premise or on the cloud using w-SaaS and Oracle. g) Netmagic Solutions (Location: Mumbai, India;Cloud Offering: CloudNet, CloudServe, PrivateCloud; Type: IaaS): Netmagic looks like a dedicated cloud provider in Indian market with a potential to become a big player in near future. h) Reliance Data Center-(a division of Reliance Communications) (Location: India; Cloud Offering: Reliance Cloud Computing Services;Cloud Type: IaaS+SaaS+PaaS):

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A hosted infrastructure service based on the Microsoft platform for Enterprises and SMBs - geared to deliver Indias largest cloud infrastructure. i) Infosys Technologies (Base Location: Bangalore, India;Cloud Offering: Cloud based Solution for Auto Sector; Cloud Type: SaaS) : Infosys Cloud Computing Consulting and Service offerings enable organizations to adopt the Cloud Computing platform selectively and effectively. But brand Infosys, the most recognized IT brand from India has to put significant efforts to catch up with other cloud providers. Though the companies listed here have a long way to go before they can be compared with the best in the world yet they have the potential to grow big with the growing Indian economy.

4 Benefits of Cloud Computing for Institutions and Students

With cloud-based education tools, the whole world can learn from the best. The service provider will take care of all the nitty-gritty, leaving schools free to devote resources towards what they do best teach our children. Also, think how convenient homework assignments will become. The students can work on the cloud, cooperate with team members and share knowledge, and be sure that they wont leave behind their homework assignments when they go to school. Since they are on the cloud, they can access them anywhere, be it home or school. From schools, lets move to colleges. Many colleges do not have sufficient hardware or software to give students a complete learning experience. This problem is especially pronounced in the technical fields. However, with SaaS and IaaS, a limited budget will still allow students access to the latest technologies on offer. There are certain benefits of cloud computing like: Free of cost, robust service. Branding of your institute (school, college or university) as youve a custom domain e-Mail Ids with your school/college/university name as suffix (Say your institutes domain name is abcd.edu then your students will have e-Mail Ids like Student_Name@abcd.edu) Enterprise class hosted e-Mail: the quality of e-Mail service, collaboration tools & storage services are better than any of the available paid on-premise services. (I guess!) Quick & Effective Communication with Anytime Anywhere Access. Collaborate globally: Collaboration tools leads to collective intelligence & creativity as students may work on their project document at the same time. Help teachers (& students) in organizing their classroom presentations and schedules. No maintenance cost. Security will be taken care of by the provider. Privacy: Google Apps is in compliance with FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). I am not so sure about Live@Edu.

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Go Green: Youll save on notebooks, papers, printing etc. Easy to deploy. Finally, you choose any one of them & your institute is associating itself with one of the most respected global IT brands.

However, our schools need more than just extraordinary teachers and innovative educational programs to overcome todays challenges. They need more efficient and costeffective systems to permit the teachers, administrators and even parents to focus more of their time and energies on these exciting initiatives. The good news is that an increasing number of secondary schools and universities are turning to SaaS and Cloud Computing alternatives to meet their escalating needs. Nearly half of the schools who participated in a 2009 survey conducted by SchoolDude.com and eSchool News were already using one or more SaaS solutions. It is challenged at how he will be able to aggregate it, security, and make it accessible post-graduation to the state Department of Education, the student or anyone the student wishes to grant access, such as an employer or higher education institution. The key advantages are: No additional cost for procurement of external hardware / software. No burden of paying an enormous amount at one time for procuring of the software. Work on a Pay-as-you go model. No need to employ any technical person at your Institution as all the technical aspects will be handled by us. Activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each Schools/ Institutions site, enabling students/ parents/ faculty and the management to access applications remotely via the web application delivery that typically is closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model. Data is highly secured and strong encryption techniques like Asymmetric key based encryption algorithms are used. Scalability becomes extremely simple and does not involve much additional costs.

Cloud computing is filling the business world with all its hype. Its a very fast emerging computing technology designed to help improve the efficiency of your computing needs, both personal and business.

5 Initial Results and Future Scenario of Cloud Computing in Education

While cloud computing is about a very simple ideaconsuming and/or delivering services from the cloud there are many issues regarding the types of cloud computing and the scope of deployment. This makes the idea of cloud computing not nearly so simple and it has become successful in many countries. There are certain future scenarios regarding cloud computing:

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Scenario 1: Through 2012, Global 1000 IT organizations will spend more money building private cloud computing services instead of offerings from public cloud computing service providers. Scenario 2: By 2012, enterprise concerns over lock-in and standards will supplant security as the biggest objections to cloud computing. Scenario 3: By 2013, at least two of the top three providers of SaaS and IaaS services will each offer a PaaS as a strategic offering. Institutions are very comfortable with using Software-as-a-Service. Below is a graph showing SaaS usage among respondents. Facebook is of course the leader in the SaaS cloud race, with Twitter and Google Docs coming in right behind them.

Fig. 2.

As far as PaaS and IaaS, most institutions are not using these services. A Brief List of Schools, Colleges, Universities & State Education Departments already on Cloud Applications: Oregon Department of Education (USA) University of Southern California (USA) Arizona State University (USA) FMS, the University of Delhi (India) New South Wales Department of Education and Training (Australia) Open University Malaysia (Malaysia) University of Cape Town - Graduate School of Business (South Africa) Alexandria University (Egypt) Riyadh College of Technology (Saudi Arabia) Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, Facultad de Ciencias (Mexico) HCMC University of Technology (Vietnam) University of Batangas (Philippines) Politeknik Kesehatan Yogyakarta (Indonesia)

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University of Aberdeen (UK) Shree Chanakya Education Society (SCES), Pune (India) University of Queensland (Australia) The Universidad Europea de Madrid (UEM) (Spain) Government of the state of So Paulo, (Brazil) Ionis Education Group (France) Canadore College (Canada) Universit della Calabria (Italy) Naresuan University (Thailand).

6 Conclusion
We see, in this paper, 40% of online Indians use webmail services, store data online, or use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the web. Online users who take advantage of cloud applications say they like the convenience of having access to data and applications from any Webconnected device. But cloud computing can be used to address tactical problems with which IT continually deals, like resource availability. We hope this problem will be recovered soon.

References
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