Xythos Software, a leading developer of document management and collaboration software, today announced that its Digital Locker Suite has been deployed to 10,000 faculty, staff and students at the Ecole Polytehcnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). With more than 250 laboratories and 3,500 research groups on campus, EPFL is one of Europe's most innovative technology institutes. The university's strong support of open systems technology, combined with its need to provide secure, shared workspaces led to the selection of Xythos.
“ Xythos provides an OS-agnostic way to share documents, helping reduce the burden on IT and preserve storage space ”
More than 170,000 files have already been added to the Xythos system to support research collaboration as well as academic and administrative work processes. EPFL users can access and manage this content over the web through their enterprise portal (uPortal) where they gain the benefit of single sign-on authentication for improved system security. As a result, EPFL has managed to almost eliminate the use of email as a method for sharing files between users and other organizations.
As a strong proponent of collaboration with industrial, economic and scientific communities throughout Switzerland and Europe, EPFL has the distinction of being an institution of firsts - from developing the first computer mouse to the first methods for decoding DNA a thousand times faster than previous systems. Web access to shared documents and files is critical to faculty and staff collaborating on projects with businesses and various Swiss banks as well as institutional research partners. Xythos' support of WebDAV-based technology helped simplify integration with EPFL file directories as well as provide easy application level access from collaborator desktops.
"Ecole Polytehcnique Federale de Lausanne is an institution that serves as a catalyst for scientific knowledge and understanding - and that process generally includes many documents we share with others. Our users expect their content be available 24/7 so we need systems that provide access to these resources without the intervention of IT," stated Predrag Viceic, Project Manager for EPFL. "Xythos provides an OS-agnostic way to share documents, helping reduce the burden on IT and preserve storage space," he added.
"Organizations like EPFL are setting new standards for how information can be safely shared on the web," said Gary Zuckerman, vice president of worldwide sales at Xythos. "Providing document storage and collaboration as a portal managed web service helps EPFL become a more responsive organization better able to advance its research objectives," he added.
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