ACADEMIA

35 Universities Enrolled in Box Enterprise Trial To Share and Manage Content in the Cloud

Internet2 and Box today announced that the Internet2 NET+ Box customized cloud offering for all U.S. higher education institutions is now generally available for production deployment. The service provides a secure and simple method for campuses to rapidly deploy Box’s content sharing and collaboration service to their entire community—students, faculty and staff.

“We are excited to announce general availability of the Internet2 NET+ Box service that is designed and supported by our members and other higher education institutions,” said Dave Lambert, Internet2 CEO and President. “The service offering covers an entire campus’ needs, with a customized offering for higher education, compelling pricing and pre-negotiated terms not otherwise commercially available.”

Early university adopters that are in the process of rolling out the service campus-wide, include Cornell, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, and UC Berkeley. To date, 35 universities are in active trials of the Box service and more than 100 universities have expressed interest in the Internet2 NET+ Box offering, since the pilot program was launched in Fall 2011.

“We understand the cloud’s potential to increase collaboration throughout our community, enable faster innovation, and cut down on IT costs,” said Laura McCain Patterson, chief information officer at University of Michigan. “In line with our long-term strategy for improving our campus IT environment, U-M recently became the first university to roll out Box campus-wide through our partnership with Internet2."

Internet2 NET+ Box service enables users to securely share, store and collaborate on content with anyone from any device, while providing for all the needs of higher education institutions, including campus single sign on log-in and integration with campus provisioning and security requirements. The service also supports Internet2’s InCommon-based authentication and offers an easy-to-use administrative interface for reporting and managing content on Box.

“Universities are moving away from their legacy systems and instead want technology that mimics what students have become accustomed to in their personal lives. Box does just that - marrying ease of use with enterprise-class security,” said Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck, general manager of enterprise at Box. “By joining forces with Internet2, higher education communities can now benefit from simple content sharing and collaboration in the cloud, giving them access to information across all devices and improving the way teams work and learn together.”

Boxʼs cloud offering is part of the Internet2 NET+ Services program to provide “above the network” services to Internet2 member organizations, including higher education, government, and industry. The new services will create a platform tailored to the needs of the Internet2 community, will be cost and administratively effective, and will leverage Internet2ʼs 100G network and InCommon identity management services.

Internet2 and Box will hold a working meeting for current and prospective users at the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting on April 25, 2012, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia.

For more details about the Internet2 NET+ Box program, FAQs, application and contract, go to http://www.internet2.edu/netplus/box.html.

Box will also be holding a security webinar on May 8, 2012, at 1pm PST to review the security architecture of Box. To join this webinar, please register at: https://boxwebinars.webex.com/boxwebinars/onstage/g.php?t=a&;d=664763416

Higher education institutions interested in the Internet2 NET+ Box service should email netplus-box@internet2.edu.