Cloud computing for education: A new dawn?

Educational establishments continue to seek opportunities to rationalize the way they manage their resources. The economic crisis that befell the world following the near collapse of the global financial system and the subsequent bailouts of local banks with billions of tax payers' money will continue to affect educational establishments that are likely to discover that governments will have less money than before to invest in them. It is argued in this article that cloud computing is likely to be one of those opportunities sought by the cash-strapped educational establishments in these difficult times and could prove to be of immense benefit (and empowering in some situations) to them clue to its flexibility and pay-as-you-go cost structure. Cloud computing is an emerging new computing paradigm for delivering computing services. This computing approach relies on a number of existing technologies, e.g., the Internet, virtualization, grid computing. Web services, etc. The provision of this service in a pay-as-you-go way through (largely) the popular medium of the Internet gives this service a new distinctiveness. In this article, some aspects of this distinctiveness will be highlighted and some light will be shed on the current concerns that might be preventing some organizations from adopting it. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.