Earlier this week on the 11-FEB-2014 PowerFolder presented its federated, high-scalable and easy-to-use Sync&Share solution for EDUcation and research at the TERENA task force meeting hosted by SWITCH in Zurich, Switzerland. TERENA is an association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) with members from over 40 countries. PowerFolder feels honored by the invitation and was pleased to meet so many experts from the international education and research community.
In the presentation we shared technical insights into PowerFolder On-Premise installations in Luxembourg (myDisk), GWDG Cloud Share in Niedersachsen, Germany (PDF) and into the largest EDU-cloud in Germany bwSync&Share operated by the Karlsruher Institut of Technology (KIT) serving up to 450.000 users in a federated, high-available installation funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Art, BW (PDF).
The topics in detail were:
- Current need of the scientific and educational community for dropbox-style, easy-to-use, Sync&Share tools for easier and safer international cooperation and collaboration.
- The pros and cons of buying cloud services or host themselves and the related security and costs implications and considerations.
- PowerFolder Sync&Share with federated authentication and authorization infrastructures (AAI), such as DFN-AAI, using Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 for Single-Sign-On (SSO) for web and non-web sync clients with rich user experience.
- High-Scalable architecture of PowerFolder for high-available and load-balanced Sync&Share services through efficient peer-to-peer (meta) data handling.
- Other aspects like integration and individualization, which typically need to be considered when planning an own on-premise Sync&Share service.
You can view/download the slides of the presentation here (PDF)
Here are the answer to the most common questions asked:
- Do you offer special pricing for education and research organizations? Yes! Contact us for details.
- What exactly is open and what is closed source of PowerFolder? Open-source is the code for core sync logic, user interface sync client, major parts of the networking code and several plugin. Closed-source is the web portal and the mobile apps. You can get the open-source code from GitHub.
- Where can I find more technical information on PowerFolder? There is plenty of information available at the PowerFolder Wiki including installations guides.
- How can I get quickly started with PowerFolder Sync&Share? The easiest way to get started is to download and install PowerFolder Server at a linux box (or windows) and open its web portal.
- Contact us for an free, extended education trial license.
A big thank you goes to the TF-Storage team for organizing and to the SWITCH team for hosting this event! It was magic 😉
You are interested in working with PowerFolder?
- We search for contributions in the area of Object Storage (CEPH / Swift) and
- Advanced data security and encryption middleware
- In return we offer free licensing of PowerFolder
- Get in contact with us!
Screenshots of PowerFolder:
Customized web portal with identity provider (IdP) selection:
Customized sync client with Identity provider (IdP) selection:
