David J. Malan’s Harvard University computer science students completed projects last fall that would have proved difficult — if not impossible — without cloud computing.
Malan secured a grant from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing service, that let his students do coursework with the company’s global computer infrastructure–virtual servers that allow students to complete data-heavy assignments without bogging down or crashing the campus’s hardware.
“It was a huge win for us pedagogically,” said Malan, who has been at Harvard since 1995. “It makes possible resources that universities might not be able to provide for students.”