Cloud Computing

UAEU always known as the role model in this region when it comes to adopting modern technologies. Cloud computing is one of the modern era opportunity which can dramatically decrease the IT services and infrastructure cost, accordingly UAEU adopted this and rolled out robust and high performance private and public cloud infrastructure based on

• Citrix XenApp,
• VDI (Virtual desktop infrastructure) and
• Microsoft Office365 Cloud.

Around more than 700 smart board computers and 400 lab workstations are thin clients, which are centrally connected to servers in UAEU owned private cloud. All the actual computing power is done on the sever, but the end user experiences the operating system and applications on thin clients which are highly energy efficient and are using 1/8 the amount of energy of a normal desktop computer.

• UAEU owned cloud infrastructure is simple, purpose-built, easy yet cost affected and highly secure. It has helped the deployment of “Applications” and “Desktops” virtually possible to reach any kind of devices, which can be lowered powered thin clients, desktops, Browsers and almost all smart mobile devices within the campus and on the move. It is easily manageable for administrators and very simple to scale out for future demands which in results bring a valuable return of investment for UAEU.
• In parallel to private cloud infrastructure, UAEU also adopted the trend of offloading the on premises workloads with external cloud providers. There was an important demand to communicate with University Alumni students which obviously are not in small numbers. To reach around 35,000+ alumni students for communication, we decided to host their mailboxes with “Microsoft Office365” public cloud provider. This project was accomplished 3 years back and will keep benefiting UAEU to move future loads as well and one of the most important point about this deployment is that it is completely free for education institutes like UAEU for hosting mailboxes.
• After the success of this, UAEU is working with Technology Partners to extend this to active students as well with more added value services like instant messaging, voice and videoconferencing, personal website including almost unlimited amount of storage capacity while paying a very less amount of cost compare to if we host locally. UAEU IT strategic team is working very closely to evaluate other cloud possibilities like SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) which can be beneficial for business and environment too.