Informatica Building an Inter-University Private Cloud with Open Source ownCloud 13 Luglio 2014 admin In late 2011, a lively discussion (we enjoy lively discussions here in Germany) among the IT managers of the publicly-funded research universities in Northrhine-Westfalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous federal state, started over a set of interrelated topics: · Endorsement or ban of public cloud services at universities: Since commercial, consumer-grade cloud services like Google Mail and Google Apps or Dropbox were growing in acceptance, also amongst researches at universities, we had to define our position on this issue. Should we endorse them as cost saving alternatives, e.g. for student mail accounts, or should we fight them, because we consider them insecure with respect to data privacy and confidentiality – a very serious matter in Germany in general and for research institutions in particular.
