With the significant development in information and communication technologies, most of the areas, specifically in developing countries, are greatly been influenced and transformed. Teaching and learning section is also the part of this change. Now, institutions are thinking over some new technologies to incorporate the teaching and the learning process through electronic ways. Cloud Computing can be one of them. It has emerged as a modern and efficient way to share IT resources at a reasonable price. Application of Cloud Computing in education not only mitigate the educational Institutions from the burden of handling the complex IT Infrastructure management as well as maintenance activities but also lead to huge cost savings. Thus, this paper tries to figure out the cost effectiveness of cloud based e-learning services as compare to on premise approach. The study adopted the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) method to compute the cost of implementing e-learning through cloud based architecture and on-premise based architecture, taking a government educational institute as sample for case study. The findings of this study serve as a base for educational institutions seeking cost effective alternatives to implement e-learning in higher education. In this paper a basic research has been carried out to show that cloud computing could be a viable alternative solution for adopting and implementing e-learning in higher education.

KEYWORDS:  Cloud Computing, On-premise Based architecture, E-learning, Higher Education.