Cloud Infrastructure for Higher Education: The Sullivan Experience

Abstract

The growth in data traffic within higher institutions has always been accompanied with the adoption of a more scalable IT infrastructure. With the increasing budgetary constraints, cloud computing (a disruptive technology) presents an attractive means to address the scalability challenges while realizing the potential of ubiquitous IT services. The on-demand business proposition of the cloud provides virtualized resources (software, platform, and infrastructure) with far-reaching efficiencies that have lowered the initial and operating IT costs for both small and large organizations. In migrating to the cloud environments, various organizations encounter challenges and experiences which are worthy of considerations by new entrants and established users. In this paper, we present the experiences of Sullivan University in transitioning to the complex cloud environment, in which a mixture of pilot and phased conversion steps were deployed in the migration process.

Cloud Computing Adoption in Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Review

“…Other researchers have documented their experiences when developing e-learning systems (5/43) [183], [188], [207], [212], [215], m-learning systems (mobile) (5/43) [196], [200], [203], [206], [208], and virtual laboratory systems (4/43) [184], [185], [199], [202]. In addition to these studies (30/43) [186], [187], [189]- [195], [197], [198], [201], [204], [205], [209]- [211], [213], [214], [216], [217], [219]- [224], other researches have shared considerably in common and highlighted issues, such as computer-supported collaborative learning platform [222], ontology-driven systems [201], SaaS platform [195], and private clouds [213]. Others have documented teaching and learning networked systems [223],cloud-based web application with integrated robotics [189],cloud-based content cooperation system [218],cloud-based open-test database system [197], and e-Meeting system [217].…”

“…A study examined engineering students' IT processing requirements based on their own internal iStar methodology [198]. Sullivan University reported their findings on the ''transition to the complex cloud environment'' [219].…”