International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 5, Issue 11, November-2014 823 ISSN 2229-5518 IJSER © 2014 http://www.ijser.org Adapting Cloud Computing in Higher Education Fazal Qudus Khan 1 , Mohammad Ishaq 1 , Asif Irshad Khan 2 and Baker Soubani 1 Abstract— In the present era of Information Technology (IT), institutions worldwide becoming highly rely on the IT services such as cloud computing for their knowledge and learning demand and support. Being able to study or teach anytime, anywhere is where we’re all headed. It’s important for higher education to echo this as well–provide more flexibility for teachers and students. Cloud computing is considered as very stable IT technology that has the high potential of supporting blended learning methodologies in education such as electronic (e) learning and mobile(m) learning. Cloud computing services are delivered to the end users as a service over a network mainly on the Internet, Computing resources are hardware and/or software that exist in on a remote machine. Cloud computing has high potential to remarkably bring down institutions high investment on hardware, software and IT maintenance as it work on the principle of pay-as-you-go. The paper explores conceivable outcomes of the cloud computing technology that can help higher institutions to support the process of blended learning. This paper describes about how we can implement cloud computing infrastructure in higher education especially in universities. This paper also try to examine how colleges and universities can take advantage of the benefits which cloud computing technology is bringing, not only economical feasibility, but also in terms of student outcomes , performance, efficiency and the environment by expanding the accessibility of education, especially in remote and underserved areas. Index Terms— Cloud computing, Higher Education Institutions, Cloud based learning and Blended Learning. ——————————  —————————— 1 INTRODUCTION HE right to Education shall not be limited to a college campus, with the rise of cloud computing Technology, immense amounts of knowledge are available in a form of digital textbooks, mobile connectivity, top class streaming video, etc that makes education as placeless and just-in-time learning domain. Cloud is a metaphor for describing the internet. Cloud computing is a mean of using the internet for your computing needs. With cloud you can use applications and system software like Plug and Play devices i.e. without downloading and installing it, although these will be billed by consumption (If the cloud is not Public). Cloud computing is fully enabled by virtualization technology (Hypervisors) and virtual appliances [1]. A virtual appliance can be installed, decommissioned and provisioned as needed, without complex configuration of operating environment. With the expansion of Google-IBM and Yahoo initiative to evolve from traditional computing into cloud Computing, there has been a very positive response from many Universities of the world, who already have begun to shift their infrastructure to Cloud Computing, The reason for this change to Cloud computing as advocated by David Wyid in his article” Cloud Computing 101: Universities are migrating to the cloud for Functionality and Savings” being, functionality and savings [2]. Cloud computing facilitate students across the globe to acquire the knowledge, skills and training they need to compete and succeed in the global information society. The world is running on the slogan “Survival for the fittest” and this is true for business as well. With competition there is a future for an organizations and projects. The same rule if applied to cloud computing, we see a lot of competition going on these days. The biggest software industry giants, Apple and Microsoft, both competing yet again and this time on Cloud computing. Apple being the underdog and is very cautious with a few cloud services available like MobileMe, Iwork.com and itunes. Microsoft Azura on the other hand promise to bring a new beginning to the world of cloud computing. In contrast the Biggest Hardware Giants Intel and IBM also are in competition with their investments in cloud computing. Taking the same slogan in mind for competition, King AbdulAziz University has also stepped forward to implement the Cloud computing on campus to improve research work and cut down the cost. The paper is organized as follows: Section I describes Introduction of the paper, sections II discuss Cloud Computing and the number Three concepts and its feature, Section III Cloud Computing and Higher Education, Section IV Identifying Cloud Services, Section V describes Education Cloud Models, Section VI listed risks in Cloud Computing and Section VII conclusion and future work. T ———————————————— • email: {fqkhan , mishaq, aikhan, balsoubani}@kau.edu.sa • 1 Department of Information Technology, King AbdulAziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. • 2 Department of Computer Science, King AbdulAziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. IJSER