Cloud computing architecture and migration strategy for universities and higher education

The concept of Cloud computing is to outsource IT data in remote servers. Data security issues are still being discussed, but the economic and ergonomic gains are not disputed by anyone. Cloud computing is also an opportunity for universities that wish to use information technologies and communication. Higher education institutions must exploit the opportunities offered by Cloud computing while minimizing security risks associated to allow access to advanced IT infrastructure, data centers, applications and sensitive information. In this work, we propose a survey of Cloud computing in Tunisian universities. The result of our research shows that Cloud computing can be used in higher education institutions because it offers an efficient and strategic use of technology to reduce the costs of implementation and maintenance. The paper takes into account the best practices for the use of Cloud computing in universities and higher education. Moreover, we propose a migration strategy, model and architecture for understanding how universities can move from the use of local servers to the use of application as a service.