Use of cloud computing in educator sector

India being a service driven economy and due to it favorable demography (young population) has emerged as a strong potential market for investment in training and education sector. Further Indias role in sectors such as software development, generic pharmaceuticals and healthcare is expanding, so it would require country to invest into learning and training segment as well. The education sector in India is divided into two main segments; the core segment comprises of school and higher education and while the noncore comprises of coaching classes, pre-schools and vocational training. The Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD) controls this segment. It requires the affiliation of either of the following bodies ICSE (Council for Indian School certificate Examination ) CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) IGCSE (International general certificate of Secondary Education ) State Board

Moreover, India has claimed 10 of the top 100 places in Times Higher Education's BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2014the world's first ranking of universities in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as 17 other emerging economies.

Market size
According to report by India ratings, due to strong demand for quality education, Indian education sector is expected to increase to Rs.6, 04, 410 Cr. (US $ 97.03 billion) by financial year 2015 Mr. Anil Sonkar, Chief technology officer (CTO) L1oudcloud system stated that Indias online education education market size is set to grow to US$ 40 billion from the present value US $ 20 billion.

How Cloud Computing be of benefit to the Education Sector?

Cloud computing offers schools, colleges, universities and other low costoptions for using high concept computing system. All that needs is an internet connection which is a low cost Student and teacher can share their work without having to use paper. Using paper is costly both to environment and in monetary term so it is no longer viable way to educate. IT admin including licensing issue, software updates and IT security management will all be taken care by your cloud provider. Removing the admin burden allows educational facilities to concentrate on their core business and be more productive. As confidential and critical data can stored centrally in the cloud there is less exposure to threats such as loss or theft of laptops or USB flash drives.

Cloud can be used in underdeveloped or emerging countries creating a way of being able to teach children who would not ordinarily have access to education.

Application of Cloud computing in Education sector

Speaking about the application of cloud computing in education sector, some universities such as NIIT, Sikkim Manipal university have launched cloud computing in their respective campus to make distance learning easy for the students who are learning off campus. Lets take an example of NIIT that has come up with the revolutionary GNIIT cloud learning. NIIT Limited who is leading Global Talent Development Corporation and Asias largest IT trainer, today launched the new age GNIIT- Indias first Cloud campus in Kochi. This unique GNIIT programme can be persued anywhere anytime, by leveraging the unique cloud learning methodology. P. Rajendran who is chief operating officer of NIIT limited launched Cloud campus teaching method in NIIT. The Pioneering NIIT Cloud Campus teaching method empowers students to learn on his own terms, at his own pace, wherever and whenever he wants it. Students enjoy higher mobility as they can easily access educational services using a notebook or a mobile devices that connects them to NIITs cloud campus network. These services will be managed centrally by NIIT, using power of Cloud computing. One the most important initiatives of NIIT in rescent times is that the new syllabus of the GNIIT programmes, is based on the revolutionary educational paradigm called collaborative learning which takes students beyond traditional classroom based student teacher relationship. P. Rajendran, Chief Operating Officer, NIIT limited spoke about this significant development. He state the new age GNIIT programmes will help to creat a pool of trained professionals for todays globalized knowledge economy. The use of Cloud platform will ensure higher mobility for students who can procure the industry endorsed curriculum even on the move, and equip themselves with skill sets, thus helping them chart exciting careers in Information Technolog.

Challenges of Cloud Computing in Higher Education

There are certain challenges in implementing Cloud Computing in education sector. Many challenges of cloud computing for academic institutions relate to its relative newness and underdevelopment of the marketplace for cloud services. For higher education decision to adopt Cloud Computing will be influenced by more than technical and cost consideration. Information flows like a lifeline in the academic systems and decision, on how to manage that information, can have far reaching political, social and economic effects on the students, faculty and the society. Adoption of Cloud Computing presents many risks and other challenges like securities, interoperability, control, need to weigh the cost and the benefits but a major factor of these

decisions will be their level of trust in both the cloud deployment model under consideration and the entity providing it. Cloud computing did not originate in the college environment, there are few colleges that are taking cloud computing seriously enough to be developing or teaching courses in this subject like MIT. Cloud Computing is truly multi-disciplined, in that the average system admin needs to understand a bit about networking, virtualization, routing, data movement, data use, process management, and security to be helpful to an organization using cloud computing. Educators are not prepared to teach cloud computing in general with a board paint bush, many computer science educators at all but the most prestigious colleges are simply not able to teach this not so new but still cutting edge technology. Cuts I Funding- everyone everywhere has had their budget slashed while we wait for consumers to come back and start spending again. This includes colleges because many colleges budget are tied to the states budget that are tied directly or indirectly to sales tax, use tax, B&O tax, or the many other ways that government taxes both business and consumers to accomplish tasks. Cloud computing is generally ill understood by the general public, including government, workers and corporations. It is not enough to teach vertualizaton, you have to teach automation, design, architecture, monitoring, and with the dearth of tool out there, in many cases you have to teach enough scripting or programming to get the task accomplished.

Conclusion
Cloud computing has been growing rapidly; it involves model offering significant advantages, yet potential facallcies as well. Cloud computing seems to be worth exploring from small businesses and major enterprises to elite universities and online colleges. The cloud is poised to revolutionize the education sector, and schools and learning institutions. Basically cloud computing will enable learners to formally undergo education even without going to the four walled classrooms. In fact cloud can also help those families who travel a lot, a cloud computing will allow their children to travel while continually learning lessons, submitting assignments, and getting grades. As a coin has two faces so as cloud computing therefore the decision taking of using cloud computing must also take into account the risk associated with it. But by using cloud the gain that exceeds the capital cost may compensates the associated risk. Some of the riscs specific to cloud environment may be transferred to cloud providers. Cloud computing having both strong and weak aspects , we may say that the scalable, portable, payment per use model and management policies of risk and security, efficiency, anytime accessibility and several other aspects represent positive factors in taking the decision of using cloud computing. In the end

universities may and should the opportunities offered by cloud computing lead to innovation.