Cloud computing refers to the web-based computing services that allows the users to access hardware and software applications operated and governed by an institution or organization in far-off areas. Cloud computing necessities the storing of data, user applications and sharing of information and computer resources. This technology is considered as boon, especially to the educational institutions as these institutions can streamline their administrative functions, mend the communication process among their staff members, afford global partnership and also reduce the IT infrastructure cost. Various scholarly articles are available regarding the adoption and benefits of cloud computing in educational institutions the major focus being laid on the deployment models, service providers, the educational platforms and also the efficiency of cloud computing in e-learning process. Some studies also give an insight about the implementation of these services in Indian Universities. However, there are very few studies which discuss the barriers in implementing cloud computing in educational institutions and hence the scope for further empirical study is needed in this perspective. This paper critically reviews the key benefits of deploying cloud computing in education and the major challenges in implementation and the possible measures to overcome the identified barriers.
Educational institutions are constantly seeking new opportunities, methods and technologies to deliver the best education and appropriate the way they manage their resources. This article critically analyses the revolution that cloud computing has brought in storing and sharing data, especially in the educational institutions. Cloud computing can be the technology that can bring revival to the cash-strapped educational institutions owing to its flexibility and “pay-as-you-go” cost benefit.
Educational institutions were taking advantage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which has emerged as the most impressive and influential approach leading to a whole new dimension in teaching learning process by creating new techniques for instruction, carrying out research, and providing resources for online learning. It is considered as an important method for educating and preparing the younger generation for their competitive future. However, the adoption of ICT in educational institutions requires initial investment in the infrastructure, maintenance cost, licensing and constant power supply. The lack of insufficient grants from the government and lack of resources acts as a deterrent to utilize this technology by many institutions (Akin, Matthew and Comfort, 2014). Unsurprisingly, in most developing countries, as accentuated by Gerald and Eden (2012), the accessibility of these technologies to the students and members of the institutions is either limited or absent. Consequently, it is crucial for such institutions to strategize alternate solutions to upgrade themselves. One such economical, efficient and widespread solution is the adoption of cloud computing which does not require new software, hardware, infrastructure or training of new personnel.
The purpose of the study is to highlight few aspects of the uniqueness of the cloud computing, in addition to shedding some light on the challenges that prevents the educational institutions to adopt cloud computing and the recommendations to overcome these challenges in Indian educational institutions.
Cloud computing is a web-based, highly flexible and quantifiable computing system that is provided on 'payper- use basis', which provides this service a unique distinction from the rest of the services. Huth and Cebula (2011) define cloud computing as a service that is used to access the data anywhere, anytime. They compare it with the e-mail services provided by the e-mail service providers like Google, Yahoo and Hotmail, where the hardware and software requirements to store and access the e-mail is taken care by the service providers, the only necessary criteria being the ability to access the network. Various authors have defined cloud computing in numerous ways and there is no specific definition for cloud computing. However, the wide-spread and most accepted definition is given by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, 2011) as “A model for enabling unique, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction”.
Cloud computing services are offered in three different categories: Software as a service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
In this approach, the applications are delivered to the clients over the internet in the form of a service. The users can easily access the application through the internet without installing the software on their computer, thus having an exemption from managing the associated hardware and software complexities. With a single application offered by the Cloud Service Providers (CSP), the users can access all the necessary functions (Rao & Challa, 2013).
Unlike SaaS, in PaaS, the user software is developed and managed by the clients themselves and hosted on the cloud as a platform provided by CSP. The platform or the facilities required to develop and maintain the entire application is provided by the vendors through the internet, and the customers do not have any control over the cloud infrastructure (Bora & Ahmed, 2013) .
In IaaS model, the resources are provided exclusively to single end user and sharing of the same resources with other clients is denied. This model offers the added privilege to the clients along with the facilities offered in PaaS by allowing them to have little control over the installed application, its storage and certain network constituents (Mansour, 2013).
Four deployment models available for cloud computing are: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and community cloud.
In the Public cloud, cloud services like applications, storage and cloud resources are shared with the general public usually owned by the cloud vendor. The services offered are subscription-free or charged on pay-per-use basis, with the cloud resource being present in a remote location. Few examples of public cloud service providers include Amazon EC2, S3, Google App Engine and Microsoft (Lakshminarayanan, Kumar & Raju, 2013) .
Private cloud is exclusive to an organization with many customers where the resources are shared only among themselves. The cloud infrastructure may be present within or outside the organization premises and the resources being managed by the organization or vendor. Community cloud is adopted by multiple organizations for a common purpose or mission. The resources in the cloud are accessible only to this specific group of organizations and are managed by the organizations or the CSP. The cloud infrastructure or the resources may be located in or off the premises (Hashim & Othman, 2014; Erkoç & Kert, 2011).
The limitations of the individual models are overcome in the hybrid cloud approaches. Organizations can use a combination of two or more clouds (public, private or community). For example, a college may use public cloud to make any announcements and use private cloud to store other confidential data (Bansal, Singh & Kumar, 2012).
The various reasons for implementing this technology in education have been investigated by various scholars in diverse educational settings (Weber, 2013; Wang & Xing, 2011). Some of the case studies where the educational institutions have successfully implemented cloud computing technology are discussed in this section.
An empirical study conducted by Yuvaraj (2013) to investigate the applications and benefits of cloud computing in 29 Indian Central University libraries reveals that the librarians are open to introduction of cloud computing in their libraries and aspire to implement the various services of cloud computing. The successful areas in implementation of cloud computing in Indian libraries portrayed by the study include cloud based mailing services, custom social networking, calendar, forum, file sharing, information collection, office application, storage and other software applications. The findings of Yuvaraj (2013) are in alignment with Behrend et al.'s (2011) perspective that cloud computing is all about making the resources available to multiple users through the internet and not just localized to a particular computer. The study has also proved the cost effectiveness of the technology over traditional computing methods in terms of reduced staff time, server cost, software, electricity consumption, maintenance and the hardware expenses.
Akin, Matthew and Comfort (2014) investigated the impact of cloud computing in public Universities in Southwestern Nigeria. The study indicated that 90% of the universities adopted cloud computing and used SaaS deployment model. The major compelling factors for universities to adopt the technology were cost efficiency, less impact on the environment, greater availability reduced IT complications and infrastructure investment. One of the colleges reported that by switching over to cloud computing, it has achieved a 65 % reduction in cost over conventional computing methods and 55% savings on IT solutions maintenance expenses. Besides achieving savings on IT investment and expenditures, the college also secured complete satisfaction of the users and also found a significant diminution in the amount of time consumed to manage IT complexities. In addition to these benefits, the investigation by Gital and Zambuk (2011) also had a similar response given by University of California at Berkeley. The members of the University reported that the other benefits received by them along with reduction in various expenses were that they were able to complete their research within the conference deadlines and manage the resources throughout the semester while meeting the deadlines.
Yet another study contributing on the benefits of cloud computing in education was conducted by Subramaniyan and Seshasaayee (2014) who reviewed the penetration status of cloud computing in Indian higher education. The highly successful implementer of this technology is NIIT with 150 centers countrywide. In order to achieve standardization of information, NIIT chose to adopt cloud computing technology so that the information and the study materials relevant to the subject is always available online to the students and can be accessed at any time. The benefits available to the students with this technology are cloud based classrooms where the students can connect to the faculties across various geographical locations, blended classrooms, i.e., integrating traditional classrooms with e-learning to provide additional information to the students and flip classrooms where the students can download the materials and use it offline in situations where connectivity is limited (Khmelevsky & Voytenko, 2010).
In majority of the reviewed articles, one of the majorly observed barriers is issues concerning the security of organization's data (Mathew, 2012). Institutions believe their data to be more secure when hosted on in-house servers than hosting on the cloud with its server located at a remote place and without having any power of controlling the availability of data across various communication channels (Akin, Matthew &Comfort, 2014; Sultan, 2010;Yadav, 2014). Although the service providers may possess a higher level of data retrieval system during failure, the institutions are cynical as the service providers host data for multiple clients, thereby drawing the attention of hackers (Tout, Sverdlik & Lawver, 2009). Another noteworthy issue adding to the complexity of security issues is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) system which aggravates the issue (Subramaniyan and Seshasaayee, 2014).
Despite the existing fear about data security, few scholars perceive it to be advantageous for the institutions to transfer data on the cloud. For example, Chandra and Borah (2012) state that the data security is of utmost importance in distance education setting and the data accessed through internet in such scenario are highly capable of being attacked by Trojan or other malicious viruses. Consequently, the whole network system may get immobilized. Hence, they suggest that cloud technology helps the institutions in protecting and monitoring the data and boosted the data security to a great extent (Mircea & Andreescu, 2010).
Another major challenge identified by the scholars is service reliability. The cloud service provided by the vendors should guarantee the quality of service in terms of both hardware and software. For instance, in situations where the users are highly dependent on the cloud services, any possible cloud server failure can adversely affect the users in terms of timely delivery of lectures, learning resources, etc. Therefore the institutions may be skeptical on choosing the right service provider (Tout, Sverdlik & Lawver, 2009; Vishwanath, Kusuma & Gupta, 2012; Chandra 2014).
Dogo, Salami and Salman (2013) perceive reliability as an issue underlying the educational establishments. They refer to reliability as having a high bandwidth broadband offering good connectivity. Implementing cloud in educational establishments where there is no network availability due to higher subscription rates or having slow connectivity due to issues related to broadband would be less feasible. Therefore in such cases accessing the data would be a major problem and sometimes the request sent to the server may be declined, thereby leading to unavailability of important data posting the users in a problematic situation.
The third widely experienced issue with implementing cloud technology is the legal contract between the cloud user and service provider. The contract should clearly mention about the level of privacy “terms of use” and the rights bestowed on the service provider. The contract should bring out the contrast between “ownership and rights of use”. Since several laws are imposed on universities regarding the transfer of data and so it can be a challenging task for them to conform to those legislatures (Dogo, Salami and Salman, 2013; Vishwanath, Kusuma and Gupta, 2012; Jain & Pandey, 2013).
Deciding upon the right, cloud service provider is also crucial for the Universities. The vendor preferred should be trustworthy and should be able to maintain a high level of data integrity (Ramgovind, Eloff & Smith, 2010). The academic institutions should strike the right level of trust in both the service provider and the cloud deployment model selected for the institution (Jain & Pandey, 2013; Bansal, Singh & Kumar, 2012; Katz, Goldstein & Yanosky, 2011).
Cloud computing has proved to be significantly cost effective to the educational institutions (Tejaswi, 2013; Hamidon, 2011). However, Rao and Challa (2013) view this factor otherwise and clearly point out that though implementation of cloud reduces the organization's expenditure, they should be careful in choosing the right service provider. Otherwise the organizations may have to bear additional expenses incurred from vendor relationship management or other superfluous charges imposed by the vendor that are exclusive to cloud computing.
Vendor lock-in is also of concern to many organizations as reviewed by many scholars. It is a service delivery technique adopted by CSPs in order to have their customers solely dependent on them and cripple the customers from switching over to other vendors due to disappointment in services received from them or necessity to upgrade to a better platform. The customers get trapped or “locked-in” by the vendors and progressing to a new CSP would prove to be expensive because of the excessive switching costs between the vendors and the educational institutions may not be able to bear the high cost involved in it. (Jain & Pandey,2013; Chandra & Tomar, 2014; World Economic Forum, 2010; Katz, Goldstein & Yanosky, 2011) . Vendor lock-in, in a study conducted by Akin, Matthew and Comfort (2014), was ranked as the third most important challenge in employing cloud technology in public universities in Nigeria.
Unsolicited advertising is yet another challenge to the educational institutions. This aspect was ranked as the “second high risk” factor by Akin, Matthew and Comfort's (2014) investigation and confirms with the interpretation of Tomasz Cieplak, Mirosław Malec (2014). Service providers persistently focus on users with unsolicited advertising or emails. Tomasz Cieplak, Mirosław Malec point out that the vendors can gather usage data and reuse it for further trading to third parties.
Hashim and Othman (2014) compare the status of cloud computing implemented in three universities, namely Malaysia, Jordan and India. The study reveals that the University of Malaysia and Jordan are successful to a certain extent in implementing cloud technology into their academics despite few glitches in the existing system. The issue faced by Malaysian university was with respect to management of research data and student's study materials and hence they could not succeed in providing necessary information and additional assistance to the students in their academics. The situation was slightly different with the Jordan University. The University faced issues with the monetary resources to support IT infrastructure and services and some of the information was still paper based. However the status of Indian Universities was similar to the Jordan University that most of the information stored is still highly paper based and hence the incurred cost being higher.
Dan Morill (2011) and Subramaniyan and Seshasaayee (2014) suggest that it is imperative on the teacher's part to instruct their students with the latest technology and encourage them to take up a number of projects. Hence the colleges should focus more on establishing the technology and organizing courses and instructions on cloud computing.
Other challenges identified by the scholars include blockade from educational institutions to upgrade to new technologies, eliminating the existing staff from the institutions, maturity of solutions, non-compatibility of certain applications on cloud platform, lack of confidence and non-repudiation (Jayasena, 2012; Maaita, Muhsen & Nsour, 2013; Jalgaonkar & Kanojia, 2013).
Based on the challenges discussed in the previous section, the following suggestions are provided to the educational institutions to overcome the barriers in implementing cloud computing technology in their functions.
Mokhtar et al. (2013) insist that foremost step to be taken to progress towards cloud computing is encouraging the cloud computing culture by creating awareness among the institution's management and the staff regarding the benefits of cloud computing through workshops, seminars, conferences, training programs and interaction with subject matter expert. Creating awareness among the management is essential in order to convince them to adopt the technology and to mentally and technically prepare the employees for working under cloud architecture. On the other hand, Chandra and Borah (2012) suggest that educational institutions should first overcome data security issues by striking a right balance between the institution's public and private data before hosting it on the cloud. The institutions have to differentiate between the data that should be launched on the public and private cloud. Confidential data, such as students' academic records, research results and monetary transaction data may be retained within the institution/university than the communication data which pose lesser security issues.
Vishwanath, Kusuma and Gupta (2012) additionally suggest the organizations to encrypt the data by the organization themselves before hosting it on a simulated location and ensure that the service providers are open to security certifications and external audits.
Tout, Sverdlik and Lawver (2009) recommend to have strict Service Level Agreement in order to reduce the security risk and also to solve other legal complications.
In India, since adopting IT infrastructure in most of the educational institutions might be difficult, these institutions can opt for both SaaS and IaaS deployment models of cloud computing. In addition, Hashim and Othman (2014) put forward that since the information management is mainly paper based, the universities should first switch over to IT management system. Also the educational institutions should be careful in selecting a cloud service provider and should ensure that the language of the legal contract is understandable to the user and the user has complete control over the data being housed on the cloud. Hence it is evident from the above discussions that educational institutions can seek multitude of benefits when cloud technology is suitably incorporated. Many colleges and universities who do not have the privilege of possessing luxurious resources can benefit immensely from this technology by sharing the resources through virtual libraries, laboratories etc. which can also be utilized by the faculties in their research endeavor.