Cloud computing helps Westminster University optimize campus management

College example: Westminster University

The University of Westminster, which has 22,000 students, is one of many UK universities using cloud computing, and its power to deploy cloud computing comes from a survey. The University of Westminster, in a survey of student email application services, found that 96% of students automatically transferred mail from their schools to the mailboxes provided by Third-party service providers. The survey revealed the problem of mail services at the University of Westminster, as well as the university's interest in applying cloud services. 2007, the University of Westminster began to seek solutions to the problem, and finally chose the Google Program (Education edition).

Google's platform provides a free e-mail service for the entire school (each student has 7.3G of space), text messages, ad-free students and faculty to share the calendar service. At the same time, Google's e-mail system allows users to retain the original "wmin.ac.uk" domain name. Google's platform also provides a set of electronic document applications that can be shared, which facilitates the networking of students during group discussions.

After trial, test, and user consultation, the school finally identified Google's platform in the 2008/2009 academic year. The reality for schools is that students prefer an existing personal messaging system to a school-provided mailbox. By setting up, the reason for transferring mail from a school's mailbox to a personal mailbox may be that the school's notice is considered spam, leading to critical urgent emails not reaching students in time. network server and mailbox storage problem means that students need to store their work in the U disk, and u disk is easily lost and poisoned. Google platform for students to provide 7.3G storage capacity, which allows students to have enough network space to store pictures, videos and other large files. In addition to providing better services to students, the final decision of the University of Westminster also considered economic considerations. The cost of using Google's mailboxes is almost nil., and it costs about 1 million pounds to provide similar storage capacity within the system. Using Google's platform, the student personal mail system spam problem will not exist. Google has also provided schools with the choice of personalized mailbox username, changing the traditional use of school numbers as the user name of the rigid way. Students can also use mobile devices to connect to the Google platform, thus facilitating the checking of mail and Remote Storage files. In addition, after graduating, students can continue to use Google's related services, including mailbox services and previously stored school homework files. So what does Google get out of this free service? Catherinetitherto, an IT project manager at Westminster University, replied: "Future business leaders are familiar with Google programs." ”

While Google's education program is free, the University of Westminster has followed its original policy guide in choosing Google's platform. For example, University archives and intellectual property policies require that all calendars, lectures, research, legal and employee information be kept in the school's own system. For the relationship between colleagues, students, school workers can use Google mail. But the official mail system is still the school's original Exchange/microsoftoutlook system. This is clearly the decision taken by the school to carefully consider the legal consequences of storing data in Third-party servers.

As a new computing system, cloud computing provides computing services in an unprecedented way. This article shows the benefits of a variety of organizations using cloud services. This benefit is not only embodied in cost savings, but also in the improvement of effectiveness and environment. Under the influence of the economic crisis, budget-deficient educational institutions may adopt cloud computing on a larger scale. In some places, cloud computing is a powerful tool for improving educational services. However, cloud computing is not perfect, and its security and reliability are the main issues to be concerned about.