bwCloud 3

Since 2018, the bwCloud has been operating as a state service in Baden-Württemberg aimed at the scientific community, including researchers, teachers and students as well as the IT departments of universities. The bwCloud not only provides IT hardware, but also offers a range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services. As part of the third phase of this project, there are plans to significantly expand the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) area within the bwCloud. The planned expansions include the integration of bwLehrpool − a platform for the provision of preconfigured virtual working environments on demand − and the development of interfaces to learning management systems, which should enable the automated provision of predefined virtual machines.

In recent years, IT requirements in the areas of research and teaching have changed significantly, which regularly leads to considerable challenges for the IT service centers. Digitalisation has become increasingly important in all areas of universities, including administration, research and teaching. Teaching content in the disciplines of data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality in particular requires not only additional storage space, but also powerful processing services that are used frequently and in parallel. In addition, the need for digital examinations in secure and virtual environments is constantly increasing. To support universities in Baden-Württemberg, the project aims to relieve or even reduce the burden on locally operated IT infrastructure while providing more cost-efficient services than those currently available on the market.

The Institute for Data Science, Cloud Computing and IT Security is contributing its IT security expertise to the bwCloud 3 Conceptualization and implementation project and leads the work on the IT security architecture for the bwCloud.

Further information about bwCloud: https://www.bw-cloud.org/