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Cloud Computing Platforms: What do you see as some of the advantages / disadvantages of cloud computing for education or business? What are some of the new cloud computing platforms, and its uses, that could be beneficial to education or business?


 * Expert || Cloud Platform Service || Purpose of Service || Description || Advantages / Disadvantage || Application to eduction / business ||
 * Justin Turner || Form of Service (Hotmail, Moodle, Office Web Apps) || Software as a Service || someone runs the software that you use online || This is a new and exploding area with a number of great offerings: Google Apps, Office Web Apps, Moodle, Schoology, Youtube. The availability of instructional / educational Youtube videos today are beneficial for educators and trainers, as well as for students. The main disadvantage are issues concerning privacy and trust. Security is a big concern where "private" slouds will be used for institutions to store sensitive data. || There are a number of offerings for educators to use in the classroom: Moodle and Schoology are just a few examples. Youtube and other video hosting sites provide a vast amount of information for educators, trainers, and students - and these are easy to access. These tools are inexpensive since a large percentage of students already have access to computers and mobile devices (either through school, through their public library system, or on personal mobile devices). ||
 * ^  || Infrastructure as a service || Rent Services || you rent the use of a datacenters hardware for data processing needs ||^   ||^   ||
 * ^  || Platform as a service (Windows azure or some web-site hosting provider) || Use of other Services || you use someone else's platform (and infrastructure) for your development environment ||^   ||^   ||
 * Jason Powell || Software (Office Live, Google Docs, Apple iCloud, Amazon Cloud Drive, Jungledisk, Files Anywhere, Dropbox) || Software as a Service || Combining a PC with a servers operating system (OS) || By combining a PC / laptop with the OS of the network applications and storage capabilities can be increased, the cloud computing platform copies the IT model by allowing users to access their system through the internet, thus expanding the capabilities and available software applications to the user. Another advantage is that large networks can share storage with multiple user's, reducing the overall required storage capabilities, one example is Apples iCloud and how they distribute music to users. One major concern is with security (job security for IT personel). || More software applications and storage capabilities are available to educational institutions, educators, and students at near to zero cost. These capabilities could be share easily across individual schools or across multiple school systems. End user, educators and students, benefit from the economies of scale. ||
 * ^  || Cloud Computing (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) || Rent Service || Purchase virtual servers for web site / web services || Companies can pay as they go. These virtual serers behave just like a real server, you can install any operating system and software on them. These services are elastic in the sense that they can be virtually upgraded with more processors, more memory, and more storage space as needed. These servers that you created are virtual representations of a machine running in a data center alongside thousands of others. || Institutions can benefit from the idea of paying-as-you-go with cloud computing services. Institutions only pay for networking capabilities as they need it. This can reduce the maintanence costs of network systems and labor costs of employing full-time IT personell schools, reducing their overall operating expenses. ||
 * Jacob Dankasa || Online Storage || Rent Services || Storing data online || Preference is to store data and backup data on portable hard-drive. Main concern is with security - tentative and needs to see issues with security addressed better. || Security is a large concern for educational institutions today where they are still incurring the costs of maintaining their own hardware in addition to using cloud based services. ||
 * Maria Gonzales || Platform as a service || Rent Services || Data storage (webhostingreport.com - 2009-2011) || Larger institutions are capable of storing data on external network safely with lower risk of stolen or broken hardware. Cloud services also make it easy to distribute copies to other employees without making hard expensive copies. Files and copies can be shared to any employee who has access. One major disadvantage is if a network connection is lost - you cloud services will be unavailable. || Distribution of files are easy through cloud based services and can become inexpensive for businesses and educational institutions. ||
 * ^  || Software / Online Storage || Software as a Service || Apple iCloud || Free services provide free storage for music, photos, videos, files, etc… This data will be accessible to all your other electronic devices (iphone, ipod, ipad, mac, pc). || Easy availability and access to instructional videos can be provided through cloud based servers for teachers to use as part of their instruction, for trainers to incorporate into their lessons, and for students to use for research and learning. ||