Case Study: University College London (UCL) accelerates research collaboration and secures long-term data preservation with DataDirect Networks' scalable cloud object storage appliance

University College London - Customer Case Study

University College London (UCL), a top-five global research university with 5,000 active researchers, needed to centralize and preserve diverse, rapidly growing project data while shifting storage responsibility from individual labs to IT and meeting strict funder retention rules. Researchers ranged from teams with a few gigabytes to projects needing hundreds of terabytes, and valuable data was often trapped on personal drives, risking loss and noncompliance.

UCL selected DataDirect Networks (DDN) — deploying GRIDScaler, WOS and iRODS — to deliver a high-performance, multi-protocol file and object storage platform. A successful half-petabyte pilot showed simplified management, out-of-the-box global collaboration, higher performance, significant cost savings and scalable, high-density capacity up to 100PB, enabling better data preservation, compliance and faster time-to-discovery.

UCL

J. Max Wilkinson

Head of Research Data Services for University College London's Information Services Division