Virtualization enables the ability to consolidate multiple servers on a single physical machine, increasing the infrastructure utilization. Maximizing the ratio of server virtual machines (VMs) to physical machines, namely the consolidation ratio, becomes an important goal toward infrastructure cost saving in a cloud. However, the consolidation…

Much like its meteorological counterpart, "Cloud Computing" is an amorphous agglomeration of entities. It is amorphous in that the exact layout of the servers, the load balancers and their functions are neither known nor fixed. Its an agglomerate in that multiple service providers and vendors often coordinate to form a multitenant system…

Open source software is poised to make a profound impact on K-12 education. For years industry experts have been predicting the widespread adoption of open source tools by K-12 school districts. They're about to be proved right. The impact may not yet have been profound, but it's fair to say that some open source systems and non-proprietary…

Location-based services (LBS for short) providers require users' current locations to answer their location-based queries, e.g., range and nearest-neighbor queries. Revealing personal location information to potentially untrusted service providers could create privacy risks for users. To this end, our objective is to design a privacy-preserving…

This article discusses the research findings from the start-up phase of an innovative information and communication technology (ICT) project focused on ICT integration as a complex process involving many factors such as leadership, school readiness and organisational culture. Known locally as Hermes, the project's core objective was to provide an…

The enterprise software market is seeing the rise of a new business model--selling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), in which a standard piece of software is owned and managed remotely by the vendor and delivered as a service over the Internet. Despite the hype, questions remain regarding the rise of this new service model and how it would impact the…

Cloud computing, one of the latest technology buzzwords, is so hard to explain that Google drove a bus from campus to campus to walk students through the company's vision of it. After students sat through a demo at computers set up nearby, they boarded the bus and got free T-shirts. The bus only stopped at colleges that had already agreed to hand…

In these days of distance learners, virtual libraries, and electronic information, no library can be without some way of providing remote access to affiliated users, whether they are distance students, online students, or local students and faculty members working from home. Libraries subscribe to any number of electronic resources and journals,…

It is proposed to establish an Integrated Distance Education System in India by designing modern technology based information communication network, connecting all its ODL (Open and Distance Learning) institutions to the headquarters of the ODL system in India. The principle roles to be performed by such a system have been discussed; according to…

Colleges and universities worldwide are turning to the hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) model and saying goodbye to issues like patch management and server optimization. Generally, SaaS involves applications (such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and e-mail) offered by a hosting provider. In this…

The pervasive popularity of the Internet in the past decade has changed the way many students live and learn, in part, because modern technology has made it possible for learners to access Real-Time Multimedia information on the Internet, or research any topic of interest to them from virtually any computer anywhere in the world. Students can also…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…