Ohio University students and faculty will soon have more space up in the clouds.
Box, an online storage solution, has been recently purchased for all OU students and faculty.
Similar to services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, Box allows its users to store documents, images, video and more online. These services provide a place to back up important documents or expand the storage space of one’s computer.
Sean O’Malley, communications director for OIT, announced the service Feb. 12 via a university press release.
According to the release, students, faculty and staff will all have access to 50GB of online storage as soon as the license is activated. For larger institutions such as OU, this can take 30-60 days to accomplish.
The university spent $340,600 for a three-year license, O’Malley said.
The new service has the ability to change how some people accomplish their day-to-day tasks.
“I use Dropbox now,” Trent Lindsay, a sophomore studying aviation flight, said. “Since (Box) has an app, I would switch. The 50 gigs is really nice.”
Box has integrated collaboration features, meaning people can create documents and then share them with coworkers or classmates so they may see and edit the documents.
Professors also have the ability to request assignments through Box. Students could submit homework or projects through the program, where professors could then give comments.
Individual users are able to sign up for personal accounts through the Box website, but are only offered 10GB for free. Users who already have personal accounts will not be able to combine these accounts with the coming OU accounts, but they can still keep both accounts.
Students also would not be able to have more than 50GB of storage under their university accounts, O’Malley said.
O’Malley lead two demos on Box during Fall Semester to show people how to use the service and gauge its popularity among students, faculty and staff.
“There’s been a lot of requests coming in, where people were asking ‘what are my options for being able to do secure file storage somewhere other than my hard drive?’” O’Malley said. “We saw the need building, and we tried to address that.”
@sethparcher
sa587812@ohiou.edu
