Dear IT Professionals,
A big change is coming to cloud storage at IU, and we want to give you plenty of time to prepare.
Box is raising its prices to an unsustainable level – 10 times current cost – and is ending its “unlimited” storage offering. Because of these changes, IU, (along with many other higher education institutions), will no longer offer Box storage as of March 2021. At that time, Box will be moved to a read-only state. Access for users will be terminated in May 2021.
Please do not move your files at this time.
Student, faculty, and staff files will be migrated to Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. IU has existing contracts with these companies, so this move will be a better use of university resources.
As with other IT service contracts, IU’s contracts with Microsoft and Google include privacy protections that prevent the unauthorized (and unlawful) access, sharing, or monetization of IU data stored through these cloud service offerings.
A few guidelines:
UITS will provide tools to migrate Box data. Users will be able to choose which service they would like their files migrated to. If no choice is made, users will be moved to a default service.
Don’t start moving now. Waiting to move all the items at once, with the tools or vendor services we provide, will ensure that file-sharing permissions and folder structure can be maintained. If you start moving now, you could lose your changes when the vendor service starts moving the files.
Do start cleaning now. The best thing you can do is delete unnecessary files and remove yourself or your unit from files or folders that you don’t want or need to access.
Don’t build new processes around Box. Investigate the options that use Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive.
Investigate current processes around Box. Find out how others within your unit are using Box. Use that information to inform discussions with your unit leader about which service would best meet your needs. Leaders of each unit will need to communicate their decisions about which service will be used, because individuals will ultimately choose the new service for themselves.
It’s early in the planning process, and our team is still working out the many details to make this change as seamless as possible. We will be in regular communication with you, our IT Pros, over the next year as we all pack up our Box and move. IT Community Partnerships will host an IT Water Cooler Wednesday, March 25 @ 3pm in Innovation Center 105, which will be announced in a forthcoming mailing with a registration link.
The information in this message is classified as University-Internal. It is also confidential to IT Pros at this time, so please do not forward this message. A special edition of the Monitor will go out soon to inform the general IU population about this change.
For more information about the migration process, please visit this KB document for IT Pros (Login to KB required): https://kb.iu.edu/d/beqp
After reading the KB document, if you have any questions about this process, please log in and fill out the following Qualtrics survey: https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eJr4vHuWWYEsUCN
If your dean or department chair would like a meeting with UITS, please indicate that on the survey and we will work with you to schedule one.
Thank you for your patience.
–IT Community Partnerships on behalf of the Box Taskforce