Cloud Computing is an internet based location-independent technology which provides resources, like software, data, computational resources on demand as a service using remote servers. The huge growth in Cloud Computing results new challanges and possibilities for educational institutions. Cloud Computing with virtualization can provide institutions cost effective and flexible infrastructure.

The aim is of this presentation to compare the available Cloud Computing tool kits by their functionality and usability in education. Amazon, the first commercial providers of cloud services launched the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) beta in 2006. In 2008 Google announced the beta version of App Engine. VMWARE announced its cloud platform vCloud in 2009, and in 2010 Microsoft has also joined to the cloud tools market with Windows Azure.

The well known alternatives to the commercial solutions are several open source Cloud Computing toolkits. Prominent examples include OpenNebula as well as the Eucalyptus cloud software and the CloudStack from cloud.com.

After the comparision of Cloud Computing toolkits a short summary will be placed about some real world cloud systems implemented by educational institutions.