The cloud. You’ve heard about how it’s revolutionized the way people are doing business, from how they watch movies to how they store their data. Now, a new deal with Panzura Global Cloud Storage System is bringing the cloud to California State University, Northridge for its backup needs.

For those who don’t know what it is, cloud computing allows resources — whether it’s a movie, piece of software or storage space — to be delivered over a network, in this case the Internet. By making this transition, CSUN hopes to move all the school’s digitized information (more than 300 terabytes worth) off-site, thus, allowing the school to have a smaller amount of power-draining and maintenance-requiring machines that need care.

“Our goal was to increase process efficiency and reduce storage footprint for off-site backups by eliminating tape and avoiding use of campus-owned disks for off-site backup storage,” Chris Olsen, senior director of infrastructure services and ISO at CSUN, told MarketWatch. The tape Olsen mentions is the magnetic tape data storage systems used by many organization like CSUN who need to save vast amounts of information. There was some hesitation initially to store data off-site, due to concerns about bandwidth costs, data security, and control over capacity, but Olsen said he found the perfect solution with Panzura.

Olsen will be discussing the move to the cloud, CSUN’s IT structure and more in a free webinar on June 11, 2013. To register, you can click here.

Read more: Cal State University, Northridge Adopts Cloud-Based Backup [Campus Technology]

California State University, Northridge, Shifts Off-site Backup to Panzura, Embraces Cloud [MarketWatch]

Information Technology