Cloud computing as a new kind of advanced technology accelerates the innovation for the computer industry in recent times. Recently the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has signed an MOU with Microsoft for cloudy wares, for its seven million students and half a million staff hook up to the Redmond cloud. In shortly more than ten thousand technical colleges around India will be connected with Office 365 and Live@Edu. AICTE adopts Cloud to Improve Technical Education and prepare students for the workforce of tomorrow. The irony about cloud computing is that most people have already been using it to some extent but may not even realize it. Gmail and Yahoo Mail and Facebook are some examples for cloud based application. Industry forecast predicts that cloud computing will account for 33 percent of all data center traffic by 2015 - tripling the current percentage and about 12 times the total current volume (1). The Open and Distance Learning institutions cater to millions of people scattered all over a particular region. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of adopting cloud computing technologies in an Open University scenario, with particular reference to Tamil Nadu Open University, Chennai.

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Cloud Computing Open And Distance Learning Open University