Overview:

After reviewing several options, including Microsoft SharePoint, Griffith University selected FileWay from Everywhere Networks.

The deciding factors in choosing FileWay were:

~ its comparable functionality to NetStorage

~ the relative cost of FileWay compared with alternatives

~ that no desktop agent is required

~ its integration with Active Directory

~ its relatively wide support for non-IE web browsers.

Griffith University QLD is Australia’s ninth largest provider of higher education, offering more than 300 degrees across five campuses and is home to more than 40,000 students from 124 countries.

Since opening its doors in 1975, Griffith University has come to be regarded as one of Australia’s most innovative tertiary institutions and one of the most influential universities in the Asia-Pacific region.

The University was migrating the staff and student computing environment from Novell to Microsoft for desktop management, authentication, and file and print services. They needed to provide a secure, browser-based file access service for 40,000+ users, both staff and students.

Based on the principal of replacing ’like-for-like’, that all existing services supported by Novell needed to be available once migrated to Microsoft. The functionality provided by the HTTPS file access hosted by Novell NetStorage needed to be available in the post-migration Microsoft environment.

The FileWay functional similarity to Novell NetStorage meant that there was a reduced learning curve for the end users, and no specialist skills were required to administer the deployment of FileWay, hosted on Windows Server 2008.

"FileWay has proven to be a robust and reliable service for providing ubiquitous web-based file access for our students and staff,” said Blake Carney, Project Manager, NDS-AD Migration for Information and Communication Technology Services at Griffith University.

Carney is very satisfied with the support received from Everywhere Networks combined with the local assistance of their distributors Enablement Solutions.

"Everywhere Networks has fully supported our service model and AD forest security model. They have also been responsive to our needs and actively participated as members of the project team to make the successful deployment of their FileWay product contribute to the success of the migration of the University to Microsoft AD", he said.