What we know is less important than our capacity to continue to learn more until e-learning appeared. While elearning technology has matured considerably since its inception, there are still many problems that practitioners find when come implementing e-learning. Also, knowledge society of the 21st century requires a flexible learning environment which is able to adapt according to learning and teaching and communication technologies and services. So, many advances in technologies are taking place throughout the world to offer new opportunities in enhancing and making learning environment more effective and efficient. This new technologies enable students to personalize the environment in which they learn, utilizing a range of tools to meet their interests and needs. Therefore, universities are given great attention to new technology through research and university studies in achieving more and more advances to any country. That's why Egypt as a developed country is seeking to promote and develop its learning environment, specifically in the field of research and university studies related with applying new technology in e-learning field. So, research community has believed that an e-learning ecosystem is the next generation of e-learning but has faced challenges in optimizing resource allocations, dealing with dynamic demands on getting information and knowledge anywhere and anytime, handling rapid storage growth requirements, cost controlling and greater flexibility. So, flourish, growing, scalable, available, up to date and strong infrastructure elearning ecosystems in a productive and cost effective way will be needed to face challenges and rapidly changing in learning environment. This paper work focused on an e-learning ecosystem (ELES) which supports new technologies is introduced and implemented. An integration between cloud computing and Web 2.0 technologies and services used to support the development of e-learning ecosystems. Cloud computing an adoptable technology for many of the universities with its dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources as a service through the Internet and Web 2.0 brings new instruments help building dynamic elearning ecosystem on the web.

1. The Impact of Cloud Computing and Web2.0 on E-Learning Ecosystem
Yehia Helmy Mona Nasr Shimaa Ouf
Faculty of Commerce & Business Faculty of Computers & Information Faculty of Commerce & Business
Administration Helwan University, Egypt Administration
Helwan University, Egypt m.nasr@helwan.edu.eg Helwan University, Egypt
ymhelmy@yahoo.com shimaaouf@yahoo.com
Abstract What we know is less important than our capacity
to continue to learn more until e-learning appeared. While e-
learning technology has matured considerably since its
inception, there are still many problems that practitioners find
when come implementing e-learning. Also, knowledge society
of the 21st century requires a flexible learning environment
which is able to adapt according to learning and teaching
and communication technologies and services. So, many
advances in technologies are taking place throughout the
world to offer new opportunities in enhancing and making
learning environment more effective and efficient. This new
technologies enable students to personalize the environment in
which they learn, utilizing a range of tools to meet their
interests and needs. Therefore, universities are given great
attention to new technology through research and university
studies in achieving more and more advances to any country.
That's why Egypt as a developed country is seeking to
promote and develop its learning environment, specifically in
the field of research and university studies related with
applying new technology in e-learning field. So, research
community has believed that an e-learning ecosystem is the
next generation of e-learning but has faced challenges in
optimizing resource allocations, dealing with dynamic
demands on getting information and knowledge anywhere and
anytime, handling rapid storage growth requirements, cost
controlling and greater flexibility. So, flourish, growing,
scalable, available, up to date and strong infrastructure e-
learning ecosystems in a productive and cost effective way will
be needed to face challenges and rapidly changing in learning
environment. This paper work focused on an e-learning
ecosystem (ELES) which supports new technologies is
introduced and implemented. An integration between cloud
computing and Web 2.0 technologies and services used to
support the development of e-learning ecosystems. Cloud
computing an adoptable technology for many of the
universities with its dynamic scalability and usage of
virtualized resources as a service through the Internet and
Web 2.0 brings new instruments help building dynamic e-
learning ecosystem on the web.
Keywords: Cloud Computing, E-Learning, Ecosystem, Web 2.0,
Virtual Community, Microsoft Windows Azure, Virtualization.
I. INTRODUCTION
"Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with
ardor and attended to with diligence." Abigail Adams, 1780
People have been learning for ages; to eat one had to hunt, to
feel relaxed sleep, to stay alive avoid danger. One was
obliged to learn to make his/her life easier or, even more,
to survive! [1] [2] Our society of the 21st century makes great
demands on its educators and students in making every part of
their lives virtual. [5]Educators and students of the society
must permanently
adjust their skills and expertise with agility, collaborate and
compete to provide value to society. [6]It is well documented
that our society is characterized by rapid developing and ever
changing political, social, economical, educational,
technological and environmental situations [9]. As a result,
modern instructional design, learning goals and processes as
well as appropriate learning environments must support these
demands. [10]
The need for e-learning is increasing constantly and the
development and the improvement of the e-learning solutions
is necessary [11]. Also, the e-learning systems need to keep
the pace with the technology, so recently research community
has believed that e-learning ecosystem is the next generation
of e-learning and the new direction is building and hosting e-
educational system into the cloud. [7]
Also, there are several tools that offer support for e-learning
ecosystem among this tools web 2.0. During the last years, the
nature of the Internet was constantly changing from static
environment to a highly dynamic environment that enables
students to interact, collaborate. Web 2.0 as a term is closely
associated with Tim O'Reilly is considered as a collection of
web applications that reuse student generated content, initiate
social interaction (Interaction typically occurs through
discussion, commenting, collaborative writing and interactive
information sharing with other students and educators) [5].
Web 2.0 has changed the World Wide Web from the original
traditional publishing model of information into a
collaborative information creation model. [6] Also, There is
no doubt that the future belongs to the cloud computing
[3][4]. This new technological environment supports the
creation of new generation of e-learning ecosystem that is
able to run on a wide range of hardware devices, while storing
data inside the cloud [16][18]. Cloud computing is becoming
an adoptable technology for many of the educational institutes
with its dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources
as a service through the Internet. [14][15] It will likely have
important impact on the learning environment in the future.
There are elastic clouds where memory and processing power
get allocated based on computing resources required at the
time [8] [13][17]. So, the aim of this paper is to investigate
the adoption process of new technologies in educational
institute in situations of high complex environment,

2. specifically uncertainty about external, internal, and
technology factors surrounding the adoption of a new
technology.
II. AN ENHANCED E-LEARNING ECOSYSTEM BASED ON
INTEGRATION BETWEEN CLOUD COMPUTING AND WEB
2.0
There have been many new advances in the computing field
in recent times offer new opportunities in enhancing teaching
and learning. Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 are two such
areas that are beginning to significantly impact how
educational institute develop, deploy and use e-learning
ecosystem. Cloud computing is becoming an adoptable
technology for some of educational institutes with its dynamic
scalability and usage of virtualized resources as a service
through the Internet. Figure 1 introduces the proposed model
with new technologies, integration between cloud computing
and simple web 2.0 layer model will be linked with learning
processes.
Each layer will perform specific functions which contribute in
achieving the paper objectives.
Web2.0 Technologies: The first layer includes technologies
which make Web services and applications more usable and
convenient, such as AJAX, JavaScript, XSLT/XML,
XHTML, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), REST, RSS, Atom,
and the like. These technologies allow students to create,
share, collaborate & communicate, improve system
performance and make the student interface more attractive.
1. Web2.0 Services and Applications: The second layer
consists of web 2.0 services and application built on Web 2.0
technologies layer that demonstrate the foundations of the
web 2.0 concept, and they are already being used to a certain
extent in education, these applications include weblogs, wikis,
social writing tools, social bookmarking, social tagging,
podcasts, media sharing tools and social networks. These are
not really technologies as such, but services built using the
building blocks of the technologies and open standards that
underpin the Internet and the Web. The educational institute
can make use of these applications to communicate and
interact with students, educators and the wider academic
community.
2. Web 2.0 Based Activities: The third layer contains specific
activities are depending on web2.0 services and applications.
These Web 2.0 based activities include collaborative content
writing, sharing knowledge, communication, messaging,
information linking, and information presentation.
3. Learning Processes: are summarized as a number of the
learning tasks. Learning processes are defined by the learning
goals, teaching strategies and learning style. Each of the
learning tasks can be mastered by one or even several
learning activities. Such activities can be provided through the
Web 2.0 services and applications by Web 2.0 based
activities.
4. Cloud Computing: educational institute chose Microsoft as
a cloud computing service provider. E-learning ecosystem
used benefits of cloud computing as follow:
-Platform as a service: Educational institute used Microsoft
windows azure platform as a new instrument to host and
deploy e-learning ecosystem in more effective way.
-Infrastructure as a service: used e-learning ecosystem on
reviewed what the cloud computing infrastructure provided
in the educational arena, especially in the educational
institute where the uses of computers are more intensive.
The Windows Azure platform today has three parts
(Windows Azure, Windows Azure AppFabric and SQL
Azure). Each part of the Windows Azure platform has its
own role to play.
Figure 1: E-learning ecosystem based on integration between
cloud computing and web 2.0
Figure 1: E-learning Ecosystem Based on Integration between Cloud
Computing and Web 2.0
Educational Institute Clients (learner and educator)
DataE-Learning Ecosystem
Internet
E-Learning Processes
Web2.0
services &
application
Web2.0
technologies
Web2.0
based
activity
Mapping
Task Tasks..TaskTask
Windows Azure Platform
Management Portal
Compute
Compute
Storage
SQL Azure
Blob
Queues
Database
Reporting
Data Sync
Identity
Access
control
service
(ACS)
Performance
Content
Delivery
Network
(CDN)
Caching
Infrastructure
Local
Development
Environment
Development
Tools
Windows
Azure SDK(s)

3. 4.1Windows Azure: Windows Azure handles load balancing
and resource management and automatically manages the
life cycle of a hosted service based on defined
requirements. Educational institute can build and deploy e-
learning ecosystem as a hosted service for Windows Azure.
Figure 2 shows its components.
Figure 2: Windows Azure has Four Main parts: Compute, Storage, CDN & Fabric
Controller
Windows Azure Compute: E-learning ecosystem built on
the Windows Azure utilizes Compute resources through
A role simply refers to
e-learning ecosystem files and configuration information
(this information tells the platform how many instances of
each role to run). E-learning ecosystem is structured as
three roles (two web roles and one worker role).
Educational institute can quickly and easily deploy e-
learning ecosystem to Web Roles and then scale its
compute capabilities up or down to meet demand.
Figure 3: A Running Windows Azure E-learning Ecosystem Consists of One
Web Role and One Worker
Windows Azure Storage: Imagine e-learning ecosystem
is running on a machine in which a hardware failure
occurs. The hardware failure would make the e-
learning ecosystem not accessible to client requests. If
e-learning ecosystem is hosted in Microsoft Windows
Azure, Windows Azure detects the hardware failure
and automatically moves e-learning ecosystem code to
a new machine so that the e-learning ecosystem
remains available to clients.
Figure 4: Client Requests Distributed to Different Machines

4. Figure 5: Windows Azure Storage Provides Blobs and Queue
The figure above shows Blobs and Queues as the central data
repository. To store on these offerings, educational institutes
must first select which of the Windows Azure data centers it
want to house its data. The table below shows the locations of
six Windows Azure data centers throughout the globe:
Table1: Six Windows Azure Datacenter
Country/Region Sub regions
United States South Central & North Central
Europe North & West
Asia Southeast & East
Educational institute selected a sub region (Southeast Asia)
close to the clients that access data in order to reduce
latency thereby improving performance. The educational
sub region in order to give educational institute a high
degree of fault tolerance. Blobs and Queues are hosted in
Windows Azure data centers and are available to e-learning
ecosystem hosted within a Windows Azure data center. The
Storage service supports virtually all types of storage needs,
from structured to unstructured data. The data storage offer
many benefits including, high availability, secure,
scalability, fault tolerance, geo replication, easy
manageability, limitless storage, and security. In addition,
the data is accessible via the Internet to any operating
system (OS) and programming language. Blobs are just
for many situations. To allow e-learning ecosystem work
with data in a more fine grained way, Windows Azure
platform provides SQL Azure.
Figure 6: SQL Azure Provides Relational Database Services in the Cloud
SQL Azure Database: This technology lets cloud e-learning
ecosystem store relational data on Microsoft servers in
Microsoft data centers. Using a cloud database also allows
converting what would be capital expenses, such as
investments in disks and DBMS software, into operating
expenses.
Figure 7: E-learning Ecosystems Access Data in SQL Azure Database through
Protocol or via OData
SQL Azure Reporting: Storing data in SQL Azure Database
be a demand for reports based on that data. Meeting this
demand is the purpose of SQL Azure Reporting.

5. SQL Azure Data Sync: Storing data in SQL Azure Database can
make it accessible to any application with an Internet
connection. Still, there are often situations where it makes
sense to maintain a copy of this cloud based data in some
other place for performance reasons. So, to synchronize data
across different SQL Azure databases in different Microsoft
data centers are useful as Figure 8 shows.
Figure 8: SQL Azure Data Sync can Synchronize Data between
SQL Azure Databases
Fabric Controller: Windows Azure e-learning ecosystem
and all of the data in Windows Azure storage reside in
some Microsoft data center. Within that data center, the set
of machines dedicated to Windows Azure and the e-
learning ecosystem that runs on them are managed by the
fabric controller. Fabric Controller is actually a Windows
Azure service that is acting as the kernel on the Windows
Azure Platform itself. The Fabric Controllers run on nodes
that will be spread across fault domains in the hardware. In
order to ensure the high availability and multiple faults
tolerant.
Content Delivery Network: Windows Azure CDN
stores copies of a blob and the static content output
of compute instances at sites closer to the
students/educators that use it to provide maximum
bandwidth for delivering content to clients. Figure 9
illustrates this idea.
Figure 9: The Windows Azure CDN Caches Copies of Blobs Around the World,
Letting Student/Educator Access that Information More Quickly
Windows Azure AppFabric: Windows Azure AppFabric
provides infrastructure for e-learning ecosystem. Educational
institute benefited from different kinds of infrastructure, and so
AppFabric contains various parts Access Control, and Caching,
the two components of Windows Azure AppFabric. Figure 10
shows these components
Figure 10: Windows Azure Provides Performance Services that can be
used by Cloud E-learning Ecosystem
Access Control Service: ACS is a Windows Azure
service that provides an easy way of authenticating
students/educators who need to access e-learning
ecosystem without having to factor complex
authentication logic into the code.

6. Figure11: The Access Control Service makes it Easier for E-learning
Ecosystem to Accept Identity Information Issued by Different Identity
Students/Educators
Caching: Caching provides a distributed, in memory,
application cache service for Windows Azure e-learning
ecosystem. Instead of relying on slower disk based storage,
e-learning ecosystems gain high speed access and scale to
data that is kept in memory. For e-learning ecosystem, one
of the most effective ways to improve performance scale to
data that is kept in memory is by caching frequently
accessed data. Figure 12 illustrates the idea.
Figure 12: Windows Azure Caching Speeds up Access to Frequently Accessed
Data for Windows Azure E-learning Ecosystem
III: MICROSOFT WINDOWS AZURE PLATFORM TCO ANALYSIS
AND CUSTOMIZED ASSESSMENT RESULTS
needs to plan ahead for increased operational,
infrastructure and production costs. One of the uses of
cloud computing is to drive down upfront cost, drive down
ongoing costs, and take complexity out of an e-learning
section, we describe how
Windows Azure, a cloud computing platform from
Microsoft, can be utilized to lower upfront and ongoing
costs that are incurred while building and running an e-
learning ecosystem. The paper also provides a detailed
ROI/TCO analysis for a sample e-learning ecosystem.
Proposed Windows Azure Platform for Educational Institute
Based on the profile of e-learning ecosystem and inputs,
Windows Azure instances were specified to be:
Number of Windows Azure instances: 8
Average use hours per day: 24.0
Average use days per year: 365
These results in the following usage / pricing profile based
on the Social Applications scenario selected:
Table 2: Usage of E-learning Ecosystem from Windows Azure
Table 3: Usage of E-learning Ecosystem from SQL Azure
E-learning
Ecosystem
E-learning
Ecosystem

7. Table 5: Total Usage of E-learning Ecosystem Bandwidth
Table 6: Total Usage of E-learning Ecosystem
Table 8: Delivery Costs per Windows Azure Instance (The person Hours to Setup,
Upload, Enable a Windows Azure Instance)
Table 9: TCO of Azure for Three Years
Table 4: Usage of E-learning Ecosystem from AppFabric
Windows Azure Platform E-Learning Ecosystem Migration and Setup Costs:
The Windows Azure Platform's specific e-learning ecosystem
migration costs tally any anticipated person hours / costs for
implementing any special platform as a service incremental
development for existing / new e-learning ecosystem. These are costs
that are incremental to developing / porting the e-learning ecosystem
to make it compatible with the Windows Azure Platform.
Table 7 Windows Azure Platform E-learning Ecosystem Migration Cost

8. Figure 13: Windows Azure Platform Total Cost of Ownership per Year over
the Three Years Analysis Period
Figure 14: Total Cost of Ownership Costs Per Month for the Windows Azure
Platform, Average Over the Three Years Analysis Period.
Comparison of the Windows Azure Platform to On-Premise
Solutions for Educational Institute:
Table 10: Comparing the Windows Azure Platform with On-Premises
Solutions Results in the Following Benefits for Windows Azure
Figure 15: Comparing the Total Cost of Ownership of the Windows Azure
Platform to on-premises Solution over the Next Three Years
Figure 16: Windows Azure Platform, Compared to on-premises solutions, the
Savings in Total Cost of Ownership over the Next Three Years

9. Table 11: Windows Azure Platform vs. On-Premises
Figure 17: Comparing the Total Cost of Ownership of the Windows Azure Platform to
on-premises Solution over the Next Three Years
Table 12: On-Premises Costs Over Three Year Analysis Period
Figure 18: On premises Cost per Year
IV: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Conclusion: The design of e-learning ecosystems is still in
its infancy. With the huge growth of students, content and
resources, e-learning ecosystem is facing challenges of
optimizing resource allocations, dealing with dynamic
concurrency demands, handling rapid storage growth

10. requirements , cost controlling and lack the support of
underlying infrastructures, which can dynamically allocate
the required computation and storage resources for e-
learning ecosystems. So the best solution for this is
adapting new technologies within e-learning ecosystem.
Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 are two such areas that are
beginning to significantly impact how e-learning ecosystem
is developed, deployed and used. Web 2.0 has changed the
World Wide Web from the original traditional publishing
model of information into a collaborative information
creation model. Cloud Computing presents a new way of
deploying e-learning ecosystem. It allows an e-learning
ecosystem with the infrastructure which is reliable, flexible,
cost efficient, self regulated, and QoS guaranteed
infrastructure. So, cloud computing is an excellent
alternative for both educational institutes which are
specially under budget shortage to transform from
traditional learning to e-learning and educational institutes
which do not have the resources and infrastructure needed
to run top e-learning solution effectively. Experimental
results has been showed comparison between on premises
e-learning ecosystem and windows azure e-learning
ecosystem cost by using Microsoft Windows Azure
Platform Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and ROI(Return
On Investment ) Calculator to emphasize that the model
presented is effective. So, Cloud computing is an excellent
alternative for educational institutions which are especially
under budget shortage in order to operate their information
systems effectively without spending any more capital for
the computers and network devices.
Future Work: The future will be exited. It's something
researchers have always looked forward to! But what will
e-learning look like in a few years time? Most educational
institutes have not even completely implemented Web 2.0
and all of them have not use cloud computing technology,
so why are we asking about their plans for Web 3.0 and
cloud computing? As a result, the future of an e-learning
ecosystem is to use integration between web 3.0 and cloud
computing. Web 3.0 will improve e-learning ecosystem and
make it better, smarter and faster. In a Web 3.0 world we
will not only tap into the semantic web with all it promises,
but e-Learning ecosystem will transgress the boundaries of
traditional educational institutions, and there will be an
increase in self organized learning because students will
gain easier access to the tools and services that enable us to
personalize learning, and these will be aggregated more
easily too.
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