Cloud Computing: A New Dawn for Higher Education Institutes

The needs of students and the education providers are changing. Thus, cloud migration can enhance student learning experience and help institutes support academics.

Fremont, CA: Cloud technology has disrupted virtually every industry as the benefits of its deployment are immense. The trend is prevalent in the world of education as well. Over the past decade, personal computers and the internet have become indispensable for education institutes. As the virtual world and the actual world are practically fused, the need for more accessibility has risen. Cloud technology is the best viable option as it is reliable, flexible, and has a reasonable cost. For quality education, cloud technology has successfully addressed the accessibility issue. However, few higher education providers shy away from this emerging technology.

Higher education providers hold a significant volume of data of their students and staff. Moreover, education providers are partnering with other 

institutions and industry to support big data research projects. Several courses are dependent on technology as recording the lectures, and online distance learning becomes popular. The cloud offers flexibility for institutions to quickly scale-up their provision of data storage and a secure place to store data. Cloud technology enables researchers to access the latest software and services for analyzing their work. Cloud computing also facilitates smooth operation with data and software, which provides opportunities for more effective collaboration. It removes physical boundaries and allows education providers to partner with other institutes.

Few higher education providers perceive cloud as a risk to their data.  This perception might be based on the frequent reports of cyberattacks and data breaches. Decentralized systems and legacy technologies have their issues with the protection of data. Thus, partnering with a significant cloud vendor is the safest bet as they provide security of data by sticking to the industry standards on legislative requirements. They continuously monitor security threats, and incident response mechanisms act in the event of a breach.

The prevailing risk-averse culture hinders the adoption of cloud-based solutions by higher education providers. Several challenges, such as exiting existing IT contracts, legal and commercial issues such as data protection, and compliance with public procurement, prevail while adopting cloud technology. Such challenges can be successfully navigated with the help of cloud-savvy IT experts to change perceptions and bust the myths surrounding cloud computing. The experts can help the institutes devise a bespoke cloud strategy to meet their growing technology demands.

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