How to Build a Cloud Storage Service for Half a Million Users in Higher Education: Challenges Met and Solutions Found
Raimund Vogl, Dominik Rudolph, Anne Thoring, Holger Angenent, Stefan Stieglitz, Christian Meske · 2016
IT projects across organizational boundaries face unique challenges. This is particularly true for higher education, where experiences with largescale cooperative projects are very limited. One successful example is "sciebo -- the campuscloud", a private cloud solution with 500,000 potential users jointly operated by more than 20 universities in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia. Using the example of sciebo, this case study discusses the difficulties of inter-university IT projects, the solutions achieved and the experiences gained from the perspective of the project leaders. It particularly addresses the benefits of bringing in know-how from other disciplines, the technical implementation and the use of innovative instruments.