Content area
The paper presents the main characteristics of a cloud-based e-learning system, by comparing it to other e-learning architectures like service-oriented architecture, event driven architecture, distributed computer. The first part of the paper shows these architectures and the way they fit to e-learning systems. The second part describes the main technologies that are used for developing such systems, while the third part is dedicated to e-learning databases. Finally, the last section takes an overview of the specialized e-learning functionalities that cloud computing brings. In this paper we clarify why cloud computing isn't a simple user-client architecture, why the security reaches a high level in cloud computing and why it is so important to keep all the users' needs in a pool of resource data. An important part of the paper is where we deal with cloud computing weaknesses and how they affect the e-learning process. The main problems are the internet access, students and professors' data that is kept on suppliers' servers. Overall one should be able to distinguish an authentic cloud computing e-learning system by its functionalities, availability, portability and, of course, interface. E-learning systems use all the advantages of a cloud computing architecture: the infrastructure, the platform and the services, and the paper details all these components that lead to a cloud e-learning architecture. The characteristics of a e-learning system in cloud may differ depending on the type of cloud architecture: public, private or hybrid. Moreover, from this point the philosophy and the implementation of the system take different turns. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]