New for Fall 2009! Online Backup solutions for personal files of students, faculty, & staff
Computer resources and services that can be accessed through the Internet are considered to be "in the cloud," which means their physical location is unimportant as long as the subscriber can get to their account, data, or files at any time, from anywhere in the world, over the Internet.
Rice IT provides secure resources and services in a private cloud, which means all equipment is located on Rice property and is only accessed by Rice community members. Utilizing Rice's private cloud resources for official university data safeguards intellectual property rights; in addition, the resources cannot be sold or lost as a result of fluctuations in the commercial market for external cloud resources.
Some Rice employees and students have inquired about utilizing public cloud resources such as storage for personal data and files and Rice has signed contracts with two online backup vendors. IT recommends saving a backup of personal data and files to an external source, such as a portable hard drive or an online solution. Both of these online backup and storage vendors have been researched by IT staff members and can be utilized for personal data and file storage.