Academic Refactoring through realizing Academic Cloud

This paper describes the possibility of realizing Academic Refactoring through Academic Cloud. Recently in the IT industry, cloud computing has attracted IT experts and consumers because it reduces system development, operation, and administration costs by changing the fundamental mindset from purchasing and maintaining hardware to utilizing computing resources based on necessity. This trend has also influenced the effective use of IT in higher educational institutions, but the introduction and the effective use of cloud computing remains unclear due to the complexity and diversity of academic and administrative computing in higher educational institutions. In this paper, we introduce the notion of Academic Refactoring through Academic Cloud and the possibilities that we have already started investigating in the Tokai Academic Cloud Consortium, which was virtually formed among six Information Technology Centers of national universities in the Tokai region of Japan.