Since any computer comes with a web browser preinstalled, why can students not simply use the browser to access a cloud platform that runs the specialized software on dedicated servers? Major advantages of this approach include a homogenous hardware environment that can be adjusted to fit the needs of the course, a homogenous software environment and no time spent on software installation. We believe that this approach will gain increasing traction going forward, starting with short courses where any time saved on software installation directly translates to being able to teach more science. Today, however, there are still a couple of barriers to overcome: , and more that start rivalling some of the features of native implementations. We expect this trend to continue. 2. End user license agreements for commercial software may put restrictions on where the software can be installed, e.g. preventing installation on commercial clouds. In some cases, this can be circumvented by using institutional rather than commercial cloud services. We expect that license agreements will adapt to this new reality going forward. We also point out that this issue does not exist for open-source software. 3. Setting up a cloud platform for a course requires technical skills that many instructors lack. Less tech-savvy instructors may decide to turn to commercial pre-built platforms such as WebMO . However, we also see large reductions in the barriers to creating your own scalable and fully customizable platform through recipes like the "Zero to