In an educational and/or research environment, cloud computing systems must be exceptionally flexible and adaptable because they are serving a wide spectrum of users including students, faculty, researchers, and staff. An academic cloud must be designed as an integrated tool that delivers computational services capable of supporting everyone from a novice user up to the most sophisticated expert researcher. Most of the current commercial cloud services were not designed for academic

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... . The business model that commercial services have is not at the sustainable price-point, does not have diversity, and often not even the capability that K-20 academic environments require. While we know how to build cloud platforms, at least their infrastructures, very well; we are still unable to use them efficiently in different domains. Cloud challenges related to security and privacy, data management, provenance, and building of next generation "smart" services have grown in importance. In this paper we describe the Academic Cloud that is being built as a joint collaboration between University of Maryland Baltimore County, University System Maryland, NC State University and IBM. This academe-industry partnership is based on existing academic research discovery findings and technology, and focused on advancing the Apache VCL platform so that it can serve as a customer-centered "smart(er)" cloud service system for the State of Maryland.