Harnessing clouds for e-learning: New directions followed by UNED

In this paper, we present our work on enhancing the technological infrastructure at Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) with cloud computing principles. This includes the development of (1) virtualized environments to allow students to do practical exercises easily in the field of networks and communications; and (2) load forecasting techniques to improve on the usage of the technological infrastructures of UNED, so that the Quality of Service (QoS) experienced by users is kept and power consumption is minimized.