Towards a generic E-Cloud Architecture for Universities

Information Technology industry is growing with very high speed and has become an integral part of the curriculum of all the universities/educational institutes. Teaching or using advanced technology in university is a costly affair with highly configurable systems. Cloud Computing has emerged as a cost effective solution to provide the latest and highly configurable resources/systems with less investment. Cloud Computing technology enhances traditional e-learning system by including usage of the latest hardware and software. Virtual classroom and labs are also provided simultaneously to improve e-learning systems and enhance collaboration among remote users. Focus on Cloud Computing is to serve users of different types of requirements and allocates resources to them in a cost effective manner. Users need not to worry for licensed software, hardware configuration, storage, maintenance, up-gradation of resources and big working space. If you just have a PC and internet connection, you can use the resources from the cloud, according to your requirements and pay accordingly. This paper focuses on how cloud computing technology helps to improve education at the university/college level in a cost effective manner. It also proposes an architecture for the university system to co-ordinate among a number of affiliated colleges and collaboration among different universities. It also discusses how interaction and uniformity can be maintained in different/remote colleges under a university and enhances collaboration through the cloud. The proposed architecture is a generic and can be customized according to the need of different universities.