Doing that group project might get a lot easier if Ohio University follows through on plans discussed Tuesday.
OU is considering a partnership with the online file storage and sharing site Box.com that would give every student, faculty and staff member at the university an account with 50 GB of free online storage, said Sean O’Malley, OU’s IT communications manager.
As a member of the group Internet2, OU is eligible to get the site license for a discounted price quoted at $116,000 each year, O’Malley said.
Internet2 is an association of 247 U.S. universities and other entities that work to provide Internet connectivity for researchers.
“It’s basically a 99 percent discount compared to buying a retail license for every OU user,” O’Malley said.
A person normally has to pay a fee to use more than 10 GB of space on the site, according to Box.com’s website.
OU students would even be able to keep their accounts after they graduate.
“They would get to keep, essentially for life,” O’Malley said. “They can keep that upgraded account and they don’t have to pay for it.”
In order to gauge interest in the site, OIT held two demos to show students, faculty and staff how the site works. The first demo was Nov. 20 and the second was Dec. 3.
Having access to a site such as this for free is something many OU students and faculty members have asked for, said Brian McCarthy, associate dean for faculty, research and graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“Over the last one to three years I’ve been hearing more and more faculty and graduate students tell me that we need sort of better infrastructure for the storage and movement of files around campus and the ability to share material and the ability to do offsite backup,” McCarthy said.
Box.com also has features that its competitor Dropbox does not.
“It’s not just a file storage space like Dropbox. It does do that, but it also is a collaboration space,” said Jeffrey DiGiovanni, college clinical officer in the College of Health Sciences and Professions.
The site also allows for users to generate content and also share it with other users. Users would be able to work on the same document at the same time as they can with a Google Doc, DiGiovanni said.
“There’s a lot of different advantages that I see for both faculty and students around the college, around the university,” McCarthy said. “I think this will be a very useful.”
@MariaDeVito13
md781510@ohiou.edu
This article appeared in print under the headline "OU might obtain free web storage for campus"
