University of Dundee deploys Box collaboration tools

CTO Paul Saunders explains why university opted to deploy Box to 25,000 students

The University of Dundee has deployed secure collaboration tools from Box to its 25,000 students, as part of a move to a more service-oriented approach to IT delivery.

Speaking at the London leg of the Box World Tour, Paul Saunders, chief technology officer and director of information technology at the University of Dundee, said recent developments in higher education had created "huge challenges" that required IT to adopt a new operating model.

"We're having funding taken away from us, we've got what some people call customers; people who are paying for education who expect a very high level of service and we've got massive research partners who are global," he said.

Saunders said his department has responded to these pressures by taking a less prescriptive approach to serving the needs of the university's staff and students.

"From an IT perspective, we're restructuring our entire IT department to move us to a service-based model, so we provide customer service by asking customers what they want before we give it to them," he explained.

"So instead of people coming in and saying ‘I'd really like a nice MacBook Air' and we say ‘Well, have a lovely Windows XP device', we say let's see how we can do that," Saunders said.

The University of Dundee is now an "information business" wherein data and communications are constantly shared, he said. Information security is therefore a hugely important issue, but Saunders explained how driving that message home to students storing data on the public cloud remains difficult.

"We've tried scaring them and we've tried appealing to their better nature, but we need to take that on and give people solutions which are secure," he said.

For university students to want to use an enterprise collaboration tool, "the solutions need to be as good as what they can get in the consumer marketspace," Saunders added. "That's why we're using Box."

"We've got students, we've got partners, we've got researchers and we've got staff and so far it's been incredibly successful," he concluded.

The 'Box World Tour' event also saw Box CEO Arron Levie announce that Lancaster University has deployed Box to its 18,000 students and staff as it moves towards digital transformation.

"There's been an increase in demand for technology that enables a faster and more efficient way of working. Box was exactly what we needed to enable greater collaboration among our staff and students and it fits within our strategy of embracing the new age of digital transformation," Paul Harness, director of Information Systems Services at Lancaster University said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Box added AstraZeneca to its growing list of customers. The pharmaceuticals firm announced that it chose Box to supply cloud and collaboration services across its 51,000 employees who work in over 100 countries.