U of Southern California Implements Private Cloud Collaboration Solution

The University of Southern California (USC) has plans to implement a private cloud collaboration solution with a unified data storage appliance. The solution is licensed to support up to 5,000 users at one of the university's professional schools.

The school wanted to enable its faculty and students to collaborate online in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment, but public cloud services don't provide the level of security and auditing required by the university.

USC chose the IceBox private cloud collaboration solution from IceWeb with an IceWeb 2200 IceBox storage appliance.

According to information from the company, the IceBox 2200 provides:

  • 8 TB of storage capacity that is expandable to 48 TB;
  • 2U (rack units) form factor;
  • 256-bit data encryption;
  • Built-in backup utility and disaster recovery replication capability;
  • BYOD support for Apple iOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Android; and
  • Ability to present existing Windows network file shares through the IceBOX Cloud Platform.

Using the IceBox private cloud, faculty and students at USC will be able to access, share, and synchronize files — including very large files — securely from virtually any device, anywhere. Changes to files are assigned version numbers automatically, so people can retrieve older versions of documents as needed. The solution's auditing features let administrators monitor activity to ensure data security and compliance.

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit research university based in Los Angeles, CA. It serves approximately 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students and employs more than 3,500 full-time faculty members.

Further information about IceWeb's IceBox private cloud collaboration solution can be found at iceweb.com.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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