S. Palaniappan, International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, Vol.3 Issue.5, May- 2014, pg. 8-15 © 2014, IJCSMC All Rights Reserved 8 Available Online at www.ijcsmc.com International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing A Monthly Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology ISSN 2320–088X IJCSMC, Vol. 3, Issue. 5, May 2014, pg.8 – 15 RESEARCH ARTICLE Cloud Computing for Academic Environment S. Palaniappan Assistant Professor, spalani@psnacet.edu.in PG Department of Computer Applications PSNA College of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul – 624 622, Tamil Nadu, India ABSTRACT In traditional computing, we install software programs on system (computer) update the hardware as per our requirements. Documents we create or save are stored in our computer. Documents are accessible on our own network, but they can’t be accessed by computers outside the network. Using of cloud computing, the software programs aren’t run from one’s personal computer, but are rather stored on servers accessed via the Internet. Cloud Computing provides resources and capabilities of Information Technology (e.g., applications, storages, communication, collaboration, infrastructure) via services offered by CSP (cloud service provider). Cloud Computing has various characteristics as shared infrastructure, self-service, pay-per use model, dynamic and virtualized, elastic and scalable. Cloud computing in academic environment will be benefitted by every student and staff where lots of collaboration and safety of data is needed in academic. Academic has various departments and many semesters where lots of students need to access the computing a need for highly available up-to-date software and hardware is must. Cloud computing has the capacity of scaling and elasticity which is perfect for such an environment. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Web service, Virtualization, Grid Computing, Virtual Computing Lab, higher education institutions I. INTRODUCTION Cloud computing growth has taken all the attention of various communities like researches, student, business, consumer and government organization. Big data is the main reason for coming of cloud computing in the show, everyday lots of data in the size of PETA bytes are uploaded in the digital world which required lots of storage and computing resources. Cloud Computing is a marketing term which is also known as utility computing deliver the service as software, platform and infrastructure as a service in pay-as-you-go model to consumers. Berkeley report says on this services as ―Cloud computing,