Cloud Computing for Education and Research in Developing Countries

Recently cloud computing has offered attractive solutions for academic and research institutions due to several reasons. In this chapter, the authors present a study of how cloud computing can be used for research and teaching activities in higher educational and research institutions in developing countries. Instead of focusing on cloud computing offering for basic IT infrastructures used in daily work of these institutions, the authors concentrate on the use of cloud computing for satisfying ad hoc needs of computing resources in research and teaching activities. Thorough analyses of research and teaching activities, requirements for cloud computing, benefits of utilizing cloud computing, and adoption barriers for these activities are also included. The authors then present the selected challenges in tackling these barriers and discuss possible approaches for solving these challenges and report lessons learned and experiences in utilizing and developing cloud computing solutions for teaching and research activities in Vietnam. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0957-0.ch005