Who owns the files at your school?

Who owns student’s data?

Protecting data in schools, universities, and other educational institutions is paramount for the sake of organizations and their students. The security measures safeguarding personal information, external communication and collaborative work needs to be intact and transparent.

With Nextcloud Hub, educational institutions can easily protect their data stored on-premises to ensure utmost security. Let’s take a look at how Nextcloud functions for faculty, student’s and researchers.

Data privacy and compliance for educators

School administrators and educators are entrusted with the future of their students and their privacy. Student’s personal information must be safeguarded and kept on-premises at the school or university. Nextcloud ensures the utmost security so you can store, share and archive files with transparency and precision.

For many schools and universities, data privacy and compliance can be difficult to achieve when working with proprietary software. What schools can achieve with Nextcloud is local hosting of data on your own server and full control over the IT infrastructure.

Student remote learning and collaboration

Students learn best when the tech they use is reliable. They need to be able to easily collaborate with other students, work on homework and submit assignments and projects. Nextcloud offers an intuitive platform that students can use with ease and connect with from anywhere. When it comes to remote learning, Nextcloud provides:

• Video calls with break out rooms
• Real-time editing in documents
• Secure chat with peers and teachers
• File storage with administrator controls
• Integrations with popular e-platforms
• Access from web, mobile and desktop interfaces
• And much more!

Whatever the needs of your school, university, or institution, they can be met with Nextcloud.

Powerful and scaleable software for researchers

University researchers and PhD students work with a cumbersome amount of data. Some data is easy to store like files and documents, whereas others like images and video, sound recordings and measurement data take on a lot of storage capacity. The Nextcloud platform can handle large amounts of data, scales easily and can be stored locally on your server.

Success stories in education

Sorbonne University

Nextcloud provided the University with a sovereign cloud solution for their researchers, students and staff.

Read case study

Meiji University

Nextcloud Hub significantly improved convenience for students and faculty.

Read case study

Bring back control to your school or university

Nextcloud offers schools and universities full control over their data, IT infrastructure and future with the Nextcloud Hub solution. With ease of use for student’s, seamless collaboration for educators and capacity for researchers, Nextcloud can fit the needs for all departments.

The post Keep your data in your school: Use Nextcloud locally in educational settings appeared first on Nextcloud.

Sorbonne University, or La Sorbonne, is a a renowned university in Paris, France first established in 1257. Over more than a 750 year period, names like Marie Curie, François Mitterrand and Vera Wang were all pupils at the institution making history in science, politics and fashion. In 2018, Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) and Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI), both constituents of the University of Paris, were merged together under one name: Sorbonne.

Today, Sorbonne University boasts 55,000 students including 6,700 researchers and a staff of 15,000. As part of their digitization master plan, they wanted to set up and provide its users with personal cloud storage based on open-source products hosted on its own infrastructures. This project was dubbed ‘DropSU.’

DropSU

DropSU is Sorbonne University’s official cloud solution. It is hosted on the university’s servers so it is GDPR compliant and has restricted access to data which is ideal for researchers working on confidential files.

The main use is for university administrators who use it for storing, sharing and collaborating on documents individually or on a team. They have the ability to use it from anywhere, without having to connect to a VPN or internal network.

Since much of the administrators work is done with people outside the university, documents can be easily accessed by external users through secure file sharing. All the administrator has to do is send a file link in an email that either gives read, edit or download rights to the recipient.

All in all, users picked up DropSU quite easily as the tool is intuitive and puts you in control fast. The staff is now accustomed to the system and collaborative work is done seamlessly everyday.

Mission accomplished

With DropSU, the university was able to achieve a sovereign cloud solution for its staff and researchers. Maintaining control over their data and user accounts was an important objective for them and can now be managed by their internal IT team alongside Nextcloud.

Sorbonne University set up the technical architecture with Nextcloud Gold Partner Arawa. Arawa also assists the University with the maintenance and support of Nextcloud Hub.

Read the full case study

To learn more about this educational use case including a detailed look into their implementation of Nextcloud, their infrastructure and plans for the future, please consult the case study which you can download now.

The post Sorbonne University implements on-premise solution with Nextcloud appeared first on Nextcloud.

Located in the bustling city of Tokyo, Japan, Meiji University is a renowned private research university that has been in existence for over 140 years. Founded by three jurists, it is considered to be one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in Japan. Meiji University has four campuses spread across the greater Tokyo area, and it currently boasts a student population of around 33,000, supported by a staff just short of 3,000.

Move to Nextcloud Hub

Meiji University looked to improve its Education and Research System (ERS), a virtual infrastructure server group, utilized by both faculty members and students. With more than 900 PCs and 40 printers in circulation, the University recognized the need for a more versatile storage system to meet its growing demands.

Requirements:

• Implement a new storage infrastructure for use in education and research
• Enable access through web browsers and smartphone apps
• Facilitate secure and easy file sharing with users on and off campus
• Ensure secure and easy file sharing with non-domain users
• Provide flexible support for BYOD and other access methods
• Reduce operating costs by utilizing open source online storage

After careful evaluation, Meiji University found that Nextcloud Hub was the ideal solution to meet its needs, and the university decided to implement it with the help of the partner Stylez. As a Japan-based Nextcloud partner, Stylez specializes in providing open-source solutions to customers in the Japanese region. With its team of experts possessing strong technical capabilities and a deep understanding of open-source technology, Stylez was well-equipped to support the implementation of Nextcloud Hub at Meiji University.

Convenience unlocked

Since its introduction in early 2021, Nextcloud Hub has brought significant improvements to the file-sharing and collaboration experience of Meiji University’s students and faculty. The platform offers a secure and easy-to-use platform, making it an ideal solution for their needs.

For instance, Nextcloud Hub enabled users at Meiji University to access their personal folders on campus storage remotely via a web browser or smartphone app. This feature proved to be tremendously popular among users, with many downloading the Nextcloud app on their smartphones right away. With this new feature, file sharing became instantly more secure and convenient for users both on and off campus.

With Nextcloud Hub, faculty members at Meiji University can now seamlessly share files with external collaborators and send large files as email attachments. Previously, the university’s Windows file service struggled to support the high demand for file sharing and lacked user-friendliness, functionality and speed. However, with Nextcloud Hub, these issues have been resolved, and faculty members can now enjoy a more efficient and reliable file-sharing experience.

Open source leading Universities

Unlike traditional cloud storage services that are expensive, lead to vendor lock-in and lack flexibilty, Nextcloud offers an appealing alternative. As an open source platform, Nextcloud, Nextcloud eliminates the risks, complications, and limitations of vendor-lock-in allowing users to benefit from a wide range of features and functions. With Nextcloud, the possibilities for customization and flexibility are virtually limitless.

Meiji University quickly realized the advantages of adopting an open-source online storage solution, such as the ability to maintain on-premises operations and access publicly available source code. With this approach, the university has been able to customize and optimize its file-sharing and collaboration system to meet its specific needs.

Shota Suzuki, a systems engineer at the Ikuta Media Support Office and Information Media Department, was particularly impressed with the transparency and flexibility of Nextcloud. With access to the platform’s source code, he was able to gain a deep understanding of the system and work with it more effectively. Additionally, Suzuki was able to use Nextcloud to enhance his skills and knowledge, contributing to ongoing improvements and developments at Meiji University.

For the full story on Meiji University switching to Nextcloud, check out our case study. Nextcloud case studies feature real-life use cases from customers who made the switch to Nextcloud. By exploring these case studies, you can learn about diverse requirements, the implementation process and results achieved by various customers across multiple industries, including education.

The post Meiji University in Japan Streamlines File Sharing and Collaboration with Nextcloud Hub appeared first on Nextcloud.