A migration framework to database as a service for universities: a case of a Kenyan university

Abstract

Educational establishments continue to seek opportunities to rationalize they way they manage their resources. Innovation is necessary to ride the inevitable tide of change and one such hot recent area in Information Technology is cloud computing. Cloud computing is distributed cloud technology offering required software and hardware through internet. Due to the growing need of infrastructure, educational establishments have to spend a large amount of money on their infrastructure to fulfill the needs and demands of the users. The objective of this study was to design a database as a service migration framework for universities, taking into consideration Kenyan universities. The specific objectives were:- to explore the use of cloud computing in institutes of higher learning; examine the state of art of cloud computing in Kenyan universities; examine the readiness of Kenyan universities to adopt database as a service; examine the current cloud data migration frameworks and propose a cloud data migration framework for Kenyan universities. The study adopted descriptive research design. The study was done in four universities particularly in Information Communication Technology (ICT) department of each university. The target population was 200 ICT staff; the sample size of 24 respondents was used in the study. Data collection was done through questionnaires and semi structured interviews. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive analysis and presented through bar charts and pie charts. Thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. The findings showed that institutions with population of above 40000 were more likely to adopt cutting edge cloud computing solutions than those with less population since they were found to be more innovative than the rest. The study concludes that institutes of higher learning in Kenya are ready to adopt database as a service though this will depend on the size of the institution. The study also concludes that the proposed framework will be very useful for universities during migration of their data in cloud because the framework is vendor and technology-independent and it ensures that institutional security constraints are achieved during and after migration. The study further concludes that the proposed migration framework will play a great role in standardizing cloud computing technology and contribute to the technology maturing since there is no other vendor-technology independent framework for database migration. This work will be of great importance for educational establishments in Kenya as they seek to implement cutting edge cloud computing solutions. It will also be of importance to academic research as it will add literature on migrating database to cloud. Key words: Cloud Computing, Database-as-a-service, Migration Framework, Educational establishments, Cloud data