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Higher Education Company Consolidating LucidLink (comparison) and Cloud NAS
Company Situation
The company is part of a university’s video and film program with an intersecting music program, supporting a team of roughly five faculty members alongside 100 to 125 students. These students work on various media projects that require robust storage and collaboration capabilities. The programs are lab-based, with approximately 25 workstations equipped with physical external hard drives currently used for storing student projects.
Existing Workflow
Currently, each workstation uses a dedicated external hard drive to store student projects. Students typically save their work on these physical drives tied to specific stations. This setup forces students to use the same computer to access their projects, limiting flexibility. The system lacks centralized backup or organization, and faculty have limited access to monitor or troubleshoot student work remotely.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Lack of centralized storage leads to disorganized files scattered across multiple drives.
No backup or redundancy increases the risk of data loss.
Students are restricted to working only on specific workstations hosting their hard drives, causing scheduling conflicts.
Faculty cannot easily access or troubleshoot student projects remotely, hampering support and collaboration.
The current system does not scale efficiently with the growing number of students and projects.
Cost management is challenging because students currently do not pay specific technology fees for storage.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade would replace the fragmented physical drive system with a cloud-based virtual storage environment. Each student would receive a virtual “drive” accessible from any workstation or remote location. This cloud NAS–style workflow allows students to mount their drives locally, pull media directly into their editing software, and collaborate more fluidly. Faculty members gain the ability to remotely access student projects for support and review. The system would also provide centralized storage capacity with flexible allocation, avoiding waste and ensuring that storage is efficiently shared among students with varying needs. Additionally, Shade offers educational discounts and scalable pricing models that align with the university’s funding approach, including student technology fees.
Benefits
- Centralized, organized storage replacing dozens of physical drives.
- Remote access to projects from any workstation or off-campus location.
- Private, secure storage spaces for each student, supporting individual and group collaboration.
- Faculty access for remote troubleshooting and project review.
- Scalable storage allocation across diverse student usage profiles.
- Enhanced data protection with cloud backups and redundancy.
- Cost-effective pricing tailored for educational institutions with volume discounts.
- Streamlined IT management and reduced hardware dependency in labs.