Coexistence of cloud technology and IT infrastructure in higher education

Early 2012 Luleå University of Technology started a project on adopting cloud technology for implementation in the university's IT-infrastructure. This work-in-progress article describes the results of its pre-study phase aiming at understanding the feasibility of integrating and/or migrating main IT-infrastructure components into an IaaS system and opening ways for making university's resources more accessible to a wider public. Numbers of logistical, technical and education related challenges make such transition far from being trivial. The article focuses on the educational aspect of the pre-study. Specifically, work flows in education process of several courses in different disciplines in natural and engineering sciences were analyzed from the student and teacher perspectives. In the article a schematic of a sustainable IT infrastructure adjusted to the needs of higher education will be drafted. Further, technical readiness and challenges of using cloud technology for university scale IT-infrastructure are discussed.