The new cloud computing technology is very much in the business and eco nomic horizon, extending its horizons to non-business sectors like education. This study is a study of the need and applicability of the fast spreading business enterprises’ external cloud computing technology, to the higher educational institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the educational hub of the MENA region, in terms of three premier higher educational institutions—Zayed University (ZU), Higher College of Technology (HCT), and the UAE University (UAEU) for their collaboration services for better educational services. Employing the interview method to a sample of administrators, it was found that the institutions were lacking in cloud computing (CC) resulting in delays in student services, such as inter-university transfers of students. The administrators, however, were convinced of CC technology for inter-institutional collaboration. For this, it is suggested to establish a platform of cloud computing services, with required staff training and motivation for efficient and collaboration functioning of the HEIs in the UAE, which is evolving into a global educational center. As this is not the end of the problem, there is a need for further research in the problem, such as staff exchange, and research cooperation as it is a modest but worthwhile contribution to the educational dimension of cloud computing for educational efficiency.
Efficiency, flexibility, agility, cost, capacity and profitability are of the concerns of any organizations, whichever business, such as institutions of higher learning of immense social as well as individual value. Computing is well known to have increased organizational efficiencies. Theories and practices of management often originate from the opportunities created by new technologies [
According to Bloom and Pierri, “Cloud computing is an IT paradigm based on remote access to a shared pool of computing resources. Putting data ‘in the cloud’ essentially means paying someone else to manage it, and then connecting to their servers via the internet to access your data when you need it. It also means you don’t need to analyze these data on your own machines, but you can ‘rent’ them on demand.” [
Many companies of various sizes are currently adopting cloud computing. As against computing, “Cloud computing” has been defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of (NIST) as “a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” [
Cloud computing is likely to be one of those opportunities sought by the cash-strapped educational establishments in these difficult times of global economy and could prove to be of immense benefit (and empowering in some situations) to them due to its flexibility and pay-as-you-go cost structure [
The description of “cloud” has come from the early days of the Internet. External networks of the Internet, consisting of computers, switches, cables, servers etc., that are connected together and which the user doesn’t know much about are considered as a “cloud”. Cloud computing (CC) can be categorized into three categories, based on the cloud services types. These categories are as follows:
This is the most famous type of cloud services where the users do not need to do any type of installation or setup as the service provider does this. This type of service might include subscription. The application is created by a company or the service provider and then it is provided to the user through the Internet.
Example: Google Apps.
“Involves outsourcing the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components” [
Example: Google Compute Engine.
In this form, which is being built on top of virtualized infrastructure, the operating system and its related services “the platform” is delivered by the company to the user over the internet.
Example: Google Application Engine.
Furthermore, cloud computing can also be categorized based on the location of the cloud, as follows:
Where the customer has no visibility over the infrastructure being provided by the cloud vendor who hosts the public cloud. Many organizations might share the same infrastructure hosted by the cloud provider.
Where the infrastructure dedicated for the organization is exclusively used by this particular organization and not shared by others. They are more expensive than the public clouds as it is considered more secured since it is not being shared. It is also categorized into two types:
1) On-premise clouds: The infrastructure of the cloud is hosted internally in the organization.
2) Externally hosted private clouds: The Computing infrastructure is hosted in a cloud vendor or a third party.
This is a combination of both of the previous two types of the clouds (Public and Private) as the organization might place the critical application on a private cloud and the less critical ones on a public cloud.
The evolving technology of cloud computing, which has been a dream for many organizations, is now a reality which is being embraced progressively by organizations all around the world [
Companies and organizations had suffered for a long time in expenditures spent on purchasing software and maintenance of software as well as hardware, in additions to the licensing fees which consumed a lot of the companies’ budgets. Nowadays, cloud computing provides the same requirements to the organizations needs but at much cheaper prices.
With cloud computing, the organizations need not worry about the traditional in-house storage or backup recovery of data as the service provider or vendor is the one who takes care of this part. Efficiency increases in case of cloud solutions. In addition, organizations save a lot of manpower which consumes a large portion of the organization’s budget in order to manage the software and the hardware.
Geographic location is not an issue as cloud computing solution provides an access to the information anywhere in the world as long as there is access to the Internet.
Based on the organization’s requirements, you can scale up or down. The organization can fit its budget based on its requirements, so you pay for what you need. The system has some disadvantages too, with, of course, advantages over-weighing disadvantages, which are manageable.
The questions that rises here is: who owns the information? Is it the organization which is paying for these services or it is the hosting vendor? Based on the importance of the information saved in the cloud comes the importance of securing it. Therefore, the organization, should seek to save its information with the most reliable hosting service provider or vendor.
As information is no longer being saved in the organization, the organization might be vulnerable to external attacks and threats over the Internet.
In the light of the above, this study is a case study of the application of CC for connecting three premier higher educational institution in the United Arab Emirates UAE, with a fast-developing economy and which is an educational developing economy and which is an educational hub of the Arab World.
The United Arab Emirates is a union of seven Emirates, which was found in 1971 to be a model Arab state in all respects, by its foresighted founding fathers. The UAE’s is a well digitalized economy. Among other things, the UAE is noted for world-class higher educational institution with international staff, as well as students.
1) to resolve the problem of lack of communication between the three important public higher education institutions and also between them and the National Admissions & Placement Office (NAPO) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE),
2) to find out the best means of CC for the inter-institutional communication and coordination,
3) to bring out the benefits of CC platforms, and
4) to draw policy conclusions and recommendations.
The institutional sample involved the three institutions are the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), UAE University, Zayed University (ZU) and the NAPO that enables them to complete their joint tasks.
Obviously, the need for coordination and mutual communication among the IHEs needs no over-emphasis. For example, when a high school student fills out a NAPO application and makes his/her choice among the above-mentioned three UAE higher education institutions, NAPO formally enters the data and sends the applications to the respective institutions. However, the journey of student’s record stops at each university/college. When a student who studies in one institution like UAEU and decides to transfer to HCT, at a later stage, a real communication problem arises between academic services departments. The problem occurs when attempting to process his/her transfer, along with admission and enrolment requirements, and approving course equivalencies, where the student has to go back and forth to seek approvals and provides most of the documents.
Another issue concerning the student’s record is that the receiving institution has to clarify the academic status of the student in terms of dismissal, warnings and academic probations, which means that NAPO has to go through long time-consuming procedures. Therefore, it can be clearly seen that, in the whole process, there is a lack of a shared collaborative system between the three institutions that hold students’ records. Therefore, there is a pressing need to establish a common collaborative system joining the three institutions with each other and also with the NAPO.
The above-mentioned lack of communication is considered to be a serious problem, due to the following reasons:
• Considerable waste in time, efforts, and resources for all parties.
• Different application formats are being used by the three institutions, causing pointless duplication that adds to the student’s frustration and dissatisfaction with the service.
• Delay in automating the process between the three higher education institutions.
• Miscommunication problems as the relevant departments are not communicating directly with each other.
• Storage space which is considered as a problem when it comes to the physical files in each institution, which is also environmentally unfriendly.
• Risk of losing or misplacing documents due to having hard copies stored in various locations.
To achieve the study objectives, a sample of respondents was drawn from the select institutions and four questionnaires were addressed for relevant information by direct interview method. The three researchers had taken due care in the choice of the IHEs, sample of respondents, questionnaires and in getting the questionnaires filled by direct interview method, to get hold of correct information and a true picture of the situation of non-cloud computing, and to determine the benefits of the introduction cloud computing method (CCM).
The application of cloud computing technology to the institutions of higher education viz. colleges and universities in the educationally rising United Arab Emirates (UAE), with global faculty and students, is gone into with a sample of 3 IHEs, given below.
Source: Ranking Web of Universities, Retrieved on 24 November, 2018 from: http://www.webometrics.info/en/Asia/United%20Arab%20Emirates%20.
The students refer to the year of this study, which was carried out in the months January-March, 2018.
Four types of questionnaires were designed for the interviewees’ (See Appendixes A-D). The first Questionnaire (Appendix A) was designed to be often open ended questions. The second and Third Questionnaires (Appendix B and Appendix C) were designed to be of four open ended questions each. The fourth Questionnaire (Appendix D) was designed to be of five open ended questions. Interviews were done face-to-face (HCT, STD) and via phone with partial and email (ZU, UAEU, HCT, NAPO).
The sampling technique used in this research was focused mainly on academic services employees (officers, senior officer and supervisors) in the three institutions, NAPO supervisor, HCT Head of Enterprise System Development and one student of engineering studying in Ras Al Khaimah Higher College of Technology. A sample of 6 interviewees was selected to capture their perceptions on how can Enterprise Cloud Computing Technology solve the problem of miscommunication between the three higher education institutions and to consider the important factors needed when implementing such a technology. The interviews were arranged by setting an appointment with interviewees via email to find appropriate time to meet and samples of questions were sent to them in advance. The sample of respondents/interviews was the following.
1) Higher College of Technology (HCT)
Acadmic Service Senior Officer/Ras Al Khaimah Higher Colleges of Technology.
Head of Enterprise System Development/Abu Dhabi Central Services (CS).
Engineering Student at Ras Al Khaimah Higher Colleges of Technology. (STD).
2) United Arab Emirates University (UAEU)
Manager, Students Recruitment/Al Ain
3) National Admissions and Placement Office (NAPO)
Supervisor―Application & DP
4) Zayed University (ZU)
Admission Officer/Dubai
Interviewees were asked whether their students database was connected with other higher education institutions, (see Appendix A―Question 1). A similar question was asked to interviewees if there is any common enterprise system used among the three institutions, (see Appendix B and Appendix C―Question 1). Respondents totally agreed that currently there was no common enterprise system shared among the three institutions in order to communicate students’ records (
Participants were asked, how easy it is to transfer students to other college/university? (see Appendix A―Question 2), a similar question was asked to the student to describe the transfer experience, (see Appendix D―Question 4). As shown in
Respondents were asked about the student transfer process (see Appendix A, Appendix C and Appendix D―Question 3), as shown below, the student transfer process is summarized in
Interviewees were asked, how long does it take to complete the process of transfer? (see Appendix A―Question 4). A similar question was asked to the student, (see Appendix C and D―Question 2), as shown in
Category label | Interviewee response | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Database connectivity | No | ZU, UAEU, HCT, CS, NAPO |
Category label | Interviewees’ response | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Student Transfer | Takes longer time, delays student admission Student needs to check with other institution regarding the transfer Most of the transfers are done through NAPO | ZU, UAEU and STD UAEU and STD ZU, UAEU and HCT |
Category label | Interviewees’ responses | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Transfer Process | 1) Student checks place availability with the receiving institution and checks transfer requirements. 2) Official Transcript is requested by receiving institution 3) Students withdraw form from pervious institution and take transcript to receiving institution 4) Receiving institution check with NAPO regarding academic status 5) Once academic status is cleared, NAPO upload student record in their banner and creates a new student number 6) Receiving institution makes course equivalency if needed and admits student to the right semester. | ZU, UAEUU, HCT, NAPO and STD |
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Transfer Period | 2 to 3 weeks | ZU, UAEU, HCT, NAPO and STD |
of the interviewees agreed that it takes 2 to 3 weeks to complete the process of transferring the student from one institution to another.
Interviewees were asked in Appendix A, Appendix C and Appendix D―Question 5, if it is better to have one common student record system shared with other higher education institutions. As shown in
Participants were asked regarding the current issues they faced when admitting students transferred from other higher education institutions (see Appendix A―Question 6) and (Appendix C―Question 4). As shown in
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Sharing Student Record System | Saves time Saves effort Simplifies the process Easy to access record and check information No complications with transfer Eliminate extra steps done | ZU, UAEU, NAPO and STD ZU, UAEU and NAPO HCT, NAPO and STD HCT, NAPO and STD HCT, NAPO and STD |
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Issues | Longer time consumed because there is no direct involvement or connection between all Higher education institutions. Delay on receiving student official transcript. Some students are unable to go to Abu Dhabi to sign the withdrawal form and bring it to receiving institution. Longer time to reply to emails between NAPO and other Higher Education Institutions. Difficulties to establish equivalencies of courses. Longer time consumed to download student record in banner system in receiving institution. Student records is not updated on NAPO site after students are admitted to any Higher Institution. | ZU and HCT UAEU HCT HCT HCT HCT NAPO |
between all higher education institutions. One interviewee (UAEU) highlighted is the delay on receiving student’s official transcripts, and another interviewee (HCT) indicated some student’s inability to go to Abu Dhabi to sign the withdrawal forms and bring them back to the receiving institution, and also long time taken to reply to emails between NAPO and other institutions. Furthermore, there were some difficulties to establish equivalencies of courses and it took longer time to download students records in banner system at the receiving institution. Finally, NAPO indicated that the student records were not updated on NAPO site after the admission of students to any Higher Institution.
The participants were asked if they were familiar with Enterprise Cloud Computing or not (see Appendix A―Question 7), (Appendix B―Question 2) and (Appendix C―Question 6). As shown in
Participants were also asked regarding how useful do they think using Enterprise Cloud Computing would be and what advantages it would bring them (see Appendix A―Question 8) and (question 4 in―Appendix B). As shown in
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Knowledge about Enterprise Cloud Computing | Are actually using it Have heard about it Basic knowledge Not really | CS ZU, NAPO UAEU HCT |
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Usefulness | Saves time, efforts and money Not useful if it is not secure As heard from researcher, useful to share student information among all institutions. As heard from researcher, student will not be asked to go to Abu Dhabi to sign the withdrawal form and bring it to receiving institution No maintenance cost, smaller investment, backup, disaster recovery | ZU UAEU, CS HCT HCT CS |
asked to go to Abu Dhabi to sign the withdrawal forms and bring them back to the receiving institution. Another interviewee thought that it would not be useful if it was not secure whereas, one interviewee indicated that it would save time, efforts and money.
The research participants were asked why Enterprise Cloud Computing was not applied in their organization, (see Appendix A―Question 9). A similar question was asked to other interviewees, if there were any plan to use Cloud Computing in the future, (see Appendix B―Question 4). As shown in
Research respondents were asked regarding the type of information they would like to share it with other institutions, (see Appendix A―Question 10). As shown in
The student was asked where was he transferred from? And he indicated that he was transferred from UAEU to HCT.
Lakshminarayanan et al. [
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Why it is not applied | Don’t Know It was used in HCT in 2014 for storing critical logs HCT was planning to use it in 2015 for share point in Cloud | ZU, UAEU and HCT CS CS |
Category label | Interview themes | Respondents |
---|---|---|
Type of Shared Information | Student academic status Student Transcript Student attendance Teachers comments Special details needed about student | ZU, UAEU and HCT ZU, UAEU and HCT HCT HCT ZU and HCT |
of the research is on one department which is the Academic Services of each institution and related parties such as NAPO and students as being the customers of these institutions. In order to investigate how Cloud Computing can be the best fit for these institutions and the factors that must be considered, six qualitative interviews were conducted. It was important to hear from the relevant people and ask them to explain how they performed things and what can he enhanced. The questions and the answers were grouped and categorized to be analyzed as follows:
As shown in
The results shown in
There was a question shown in Other Questions part, Appendix D, represents a response from a student who transferred from UAEU to HCT. The researchers wanted to see the importance of having a shared student system from a customer’s point of view which is in this case is the student. The intention was to interview more than one student, but because of the time limitation and as holiday season was approaching, one interview was conducted and it was useful as it confirmed the need for implementing Cloud Computing in the three higher education institutions. Thomas [
The overall conclusion of the study is that the IHEs in the UAE are not presently cloud computing connected, but they would like to have this new computing system for inter-university connectivity and better student services, especially in migration from one university/college to another university/college, with care.
In the light of the above overall conclusion, some Recommendations, Suggestions are ventured.
1) For services and service organization(s), Platform as a service (PaaS) should be a good cloud computing option, as in the case of the three institutions because of:
a) The flexibility of this model to be customized.
b) Developers will take the responsibility of managing and modifying, testing and deploying the application based on the institutions requirements in a much quicker, simpler and cost-effective way.
c) A third party takes the responsibility to manage and virtualize servers, storage, networking and PaaS software itself.
d) It can be used as a hybrid model when there is a need for either public or private cloud in case of future expansion.
2) The three institutions can deploy a public cloud in a hosting vendor which takes care of the whole hardware infrastructure provided for the cloud. Scalability of the hardware will be based on the requirements coming from the three institutions based on their needs and growth. This means you can scale up or down based on the needs of that application and the recommendation coming from the institutions.
3) The facility can involve more IHEs in the Emirates, which is emerging as a global educational higher education centre.
4) Workshops need to be run to familiarize staff with the usefulness of Cloud Computing and its features and how to use it.
5) Trainings should be provided for the developers as, for example people from IT department.
6) Quality of service security, and confidentially of data can be managed through a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to be signed by the institutions and the third party.
It is expected that many employees in the involved institutions, studied will not embrace the introduction of the proposed technology wholeheartedly. Employees often resist change for various reasons. For many employees’ their routine gives them a sense of security. Anything that disturbs the routine triggers fear of loss of control. This is particularly true of the proposed “change”, in which way, questions their current knowledge. To them, knowledge is power, and anything that questions this knowledge may be perceived as loss of power/ control.
In any organization, people in general are critical of any big change in the established organizational practices. The fear of change in our particular case is fear of sudden incompetency. Some employees who have been working in these institutions for many years and perhaps were awarded for their competency at work might suddenly fear this change because they might lack the technical skills to deal with the proposed electronic system and, therefore, fear being labeled as incompetent. Argues that some employees might resist change because they lack technical skills to use and reap the benefits of new technology [
It is the employees who make up organizations and they are the recipients and implementers of change. They are the ones who will either accept and adopt changes, or resent and oppose changes. If organizational change is to be effective and prosper their organizations, the employees must be prepared for such transformation. Change readiness does not happen automatically and it should not be underestimated. Misjudging the organizational and employees change readiness may result in managers spending significant time and effort trying to deal with employees’ reaction to change [
No change will be realized effectively without first dealing with the reaction of employees to the change. In other words, employees should be convinced to change and made willing to change. Vakola, stated that “organizational change cannot be effectively implemented without change recipients’ willingness to change themselves and support the suggested organizational change programme/initiative [
Insufficient or confusing communication is one of the main reasons for the failure of change efforts [
Frankly speaking, how can we expect employees to wholeheartedly embrace the proposed change without first promising them that they will receive the necessary training and coaching to enable them to work comfortably with the new system? The importance of effective training in providing employees with the confidence and the essential skills enables them to carry out their assigned duties [
This study is mainly a small sample study of the problem of application of cloud computing to 3 select higher educational institutions in the United Arab Emirates, for their collaborative functioning. As such, it is bound by the limitations of sample, data, time, etc., though it brings home the fact of the need for cloud computing on higher educational institution in the UAE. It is largely management based with under representation of students in respondent sample. A different sample (s) over a different period may bring in different results.
Hence, future research on the problem may take care of different geographic (areas), institutions and Efficiency aspect, etc.
We are grateful to those administrators at Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE University, Zayed University, and the National Admissions and Placement Office of the sample cooperation, in responding to questionnaires.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
El Khatib, M.M., Ahmed, G. and Al-Nakeeb, A. (2019) Enterprise Cloud Computing Project for Connecting Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study of the UAE. Modern Economy, 10, 137-155. https://doi.org/10.4236/me.2019.101010
Interview Questions (ZU, UAEU, HCT)
Interview Questions (CS)
Interview Questions (NAPO)
Interview Questions (STD)