MARCH 1, 2016 Dropbox today announced a partnership with AARNet, the leading research and education network provider and Australian national research and education network, as well as the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), to bring greater collaboration and savings to Australian research and educational institutions.

The partnership will now allow AARNet’s one million plus users at research and education institutions across Australia, to access Dropbox ‘on-net’, meaning they will no longer have to pay for data resulting from traffic to and from the service.

Further savings to the sector will also be realised as part of the industry-wide procurement agreement with CAUDIT, designed to deliver discounted Dropbox for Education licenses to research and education institutions, as well as create a standard legal framework to facilitate the quick and easy deployment of the service on campus.

Dropbox for Education is already used in over 3,000 education and research institutions worldwide, such as Arizona State University, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and California State University, Fullerton. Features such as robust IT management tools to give IT administrators greater control to manage and protect data on campus, as well as seamless integration with over 300,000 apps, including popular higher education tools such as Blackboard and Turnitin, facilitates collaboration, making Dropbox Education a popular choice with educators as Chris Hancock, CEO of AARNet explains:

“Institutions across our research and education community are asking for cloud solutions that support collaboration by easily and securely meeting the storage needs of students, faculty and staff, ” says Hancock. “This partnership with Dropbox is a great example of how we all work with leading cloud technology companies to drive cost-efficient initiatives for the benefit of research and education.”

Charlie Wood Managing Director of Dropbox APAC, says the partnership would facilitate smarter working and collaboration within education and research institutions by simplifying the way students, researchers and faculty work together.

“The partnership goes to the heart of supporting the people who are helping to build our knowledge economy which is critical to Australia’s future prosperity,” says Wood. “We are very proud of our role in facilitating learning and knowledge exchange across the broad spectrum of institutions within this sector, both through partnerships such as that we have with CAUDIT and AARNet and company initiatives like our Campus Cup which allows students, faculty, and staff at eligible universities to earn Dropbox space.

One institution that will benefit from the partnership is Griffith University, who uses AARNet to deploy a range of technologies across its network.

“Dropbox is a popular service with thousands of our clients. The volume of Griffith information held in Dropbox will continue to exponentially grow as we exploit the Dropbox services. Griffith’s internet traffic will grow alongside that. The agreement with AARNet provides an immediate saving on Griffith’s traffic costs, a saving that will grow over time. These savings, along with the information management capabilities Dropbox for Education has been an essential component of the business case for adoption,” says Bruce Callow, Chief Technology Officer, Griffith University

Free ‘on-net’ use of Dropbox for Education is now available to AARNet customers.

More information

Find out more about AARNet’s Dropbox for Education service

AARNet Media Contact: Jane Gifford media@aarnet.edu.au

Image: Dropbox Asia Pacific Managing Director Charlie Wood (left) with AARNet CEO Chris Hancock.