Ramanujan College Establishes a Pioneering Platform for Open Cloud R&D

Outcome

Today, Ramanujan College has the dynamic infrastructure to support its ground-breaking R&D work and develop compelling cloud reference architectures for government, industry and educational institutions.

In particular, the research is focusing on comparing open-source technologies such as OpenStack, Proxmox, and Xen to find the best virtualization layer and management tools for building its new cloud stack. It also uses Kubernetes for container orchestration, enabling environments to scale automatically as their infrastructure needs change.

Another research area is software-defined networking to support the Indian government’s push to expand 5G internet access into rural areas. Experiments with the open-source Magma Core platform are already running on Ramanujan College’s private cloud and providing valuable data to inform decision-making for the 5G rollout.

Finally, one node of the private cloud is running a production application—the College’s new learning management system. This system provides online courses for more than 150,000 faculty members and research scholars at universities across India. During the pandemic, this system is a lifeline for professional development at a time when traditional face-to-face training was impossible due to India’s strict lockdowns.

Asst. Professor Rathi concludes: “The private cloud infrastructure opens up huge potential for innovation. By building next-generation cloud platforms on open-source software, we can help India lead the world and take control of its own technological future.”