{"id":358643,"date":"2026-02-09T06:52:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T05:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/?post_type=case_studies&p=358643"},"modified":"2026-02-09T06:53:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T05:53:05","slug":"sorbonne-university-implements-nextcloud-solution","status":"publish","type":"case_studies","link":"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/nl\/customers\/sorbonne-university-implements-nextcloud-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorbonne University implements on-premise solution with Nextcloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Executive summary<\/h2>\n

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Sorbonne University deployed Nextcloud as a sovereign, on-premises solution to move away from Microsoft and Google, ensuring full control over data for more than 10,000 staff members and 55,000 students.<\/p>\n

Nextcloud, implemented with the support of Nextcloud partner Arawa<\/a>, provided an intuitive, scalable solution, that now stores 40 TB of data and delivers seamless collaboration through Nextcloud Files, Nextcloud Office, and integrated apps. The platform fully meets Sorbonne\u2019s open-source ambitions and keeps user accounts, storage and infrastructure under internal IT management.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, the University plans to expand Nextcloud to all its students, increase storage capacity, migrate to object storage, and activate additional Nextcloud apps to continue to improve campus-wide collaboration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The main challenge<\/h3>\n

Sorbonne University needed to provide 15,000 employees with secure cloud storage and file sharing that maintained data sovereignty and offered an alternative to Google and Microsoft suites.<\/p>\n

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Nextcloud solution<\/h3>\n

Nextcloud Hub deployed on Sorbonne’s own infrastructure with OnlyOffice integration, load-balanced application servers, and LDAP\/SSO authentication to deliver sovereign cloud storage for thousands of staff members.<\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1765995180056{margin-bottom: 2rem !important;padding-top: 0.5rem !important;}”]<\/p>\n

About Sorbonne University<\/h2>\n

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Sorbonne University is one of the successors of the University of Paris founded in 1896. It is organized into three faculties spread across 26 sites mainly in the Latin Quarter (Quartier Latin) and there\u2019s even a campus in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Sorbonne University had 55,600 students including 10,200 international students and 6,700 researchers.[\/vc_column_text]

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\n We wanted to offer an alternative service to the Google or Microsoft office suites which would be compatible with our data sovereignty policy. <\/div>\n\n \n \n <\/div>\n [vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1765216364935{margin-bottom: 2rem !important;padding-top: 2rem !important;}”]<\/p>\n

The Challenge<\/h2>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” align=”align_left” border_width=”2″ el_width=”20″ css=”” accent_color=”#0082c9″ el_class=”nc_separator_line”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1770325195532{margin-bottom: 2rem !important;}” el_class=”process-list”]As part of its digitalization policy, Sorbonne University provides its users with personal cloud storage based on open source products hosted on its own infrastructure.<\/p>\n

This project was dubbed \u2018DropSU\u2019 and was initiated at the end of 2019 as part of a digital policy plan. The project is rooted in the notion that Sorbonne University\u2019s staff (15,000 employees) needed a way to store and share their documents online similar to other file sync and share services.<\/p>\n

Requirements<\/h4>\n