{"id":7945,"date":"2020-05-12T09:50:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T09:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/?p=7945"},"modified":"2020-05-12T09:50:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T09:50:18","slug":"nextcloud-and-onlyoffice-improve-user-storage-mobility-and-document-collaboration-in-north-west-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/fr\/blog\/nextcloud-and-onlyoffice-improve-user-storage-mobility-and-document-collaboration-in-north-west-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Nextcloud and ONLYOFFICE improve user storage mobility and document collaboration in North-West University"},"content":{"rendered":"

The North-West University (NWU) in South Africa has implemented Nextcloud and ONLYOFFICE as a combined solution to ensure secure data exchange and safe collaboration on research documents.<\/p>\n

Hans Erasmus, a junior infrastructure architect at the NWU, shares the university experience with us! Keep reading for a summary of this use case or check the case study for the full story!<\/p>\n

Download case study<\/a><\/div>\n

NWU<\/h2>\n

The North-West University<\/a><\/strong> is a South African higher education and research institution with three campuses at Potchefstroom, Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark. The NWU officially came into being on 1 January 2004 as a part of the South African government\u2019s plan to transform higher education. With its merged status and 8 faculties, the NWU became one of the largest universities in the region counting over 70,000 students.<\/p>\n

The university has 3 physically distributed locations but maintains the main infrastructure from Potchefstroom, its head office.<\/p>\n

\"NWU<\/p>\n

Replacing ‘outdated’ with innovative<\/h2>\n

Who better than a research institution appreciates innovation? Schools and universities are the places where, perhaps, we first learn about why innovation is important, and at NWU they know that not only theory matters, but the example should be given as well! What is considered innovation in the nineties has a good chance of not being called innovation after some decades and users tend to use modern tools for they needs, which makes sense, but not always works:<\/p>\n

Hans Erasmus says: \u00ab\u00a0If an organization does not cater for the needs of their employees, those employees will just go and find these solutions on their own. It can easily be a cause of chaos as you will end up with 100\u2019s or even 1000\u2019s of different individual solutions to try and supply end-user support for. So the only logical, rational path to follow is to try and keep up with the technology without losing your sanity.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cThere were widespread rumours about universities dropping ownCloud and moving to Nextcloud.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

In 2017, NWU choose Nextcloud as a modern solution to replace \u00ab\u00a0outdated\u00a0\u00bb technology and later combined it with ONLYOFFICE to suit all their organizational needs regarding research document collaboration. For now, about 6500 users have access to Nextcloud and ONLYOFFICE and they are very happy about it!<\/p>\n

Key requirements: security comes first!<\/h2>\n

Above everything else, it seems that end users want their data with them at all times, and obviously safe as well.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAfter some deep research, it became clear to the team that Nextcloud was the future and the team moved over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Key requirements of the new solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n