Case Study: University of São Paulo achieves rapid provisioning and 90% storage reduction with NetApp

University of São Paulo Sets the Curve for Cloud in Education

The University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil’s largest and a world-leading research university, faced a fragmented IT landscape of 150 disparate data centers that could not keep up with exploding storage and compute demands for climate, genomic and other research data. Provisioning new resources was slow and costly—often taking up to a year—hindering researchers and driving up IT costs and underused specialized equipment.

USP built “Cloud USP,” a massive private cloud on FlexPod with Citrix CloudPlatform that consolidated 150 data centers into six integrated environments. The cloud cut service delivery from months to minutes, enabled secure mobile access for 150,000+ students and remote researchers, reduced storage needs by 90% despite 300% data growth, and freed 30% of IT staff for strategic work—becoming a model for cloud in education across Latin America.

University of São Paulo

Antonio Roque Dechen

EVP of Administration and Professor