Globus for Box goes dormant on February 28

Due to dramatically-increased costs for Box, Stanford has decided to not renew its campus-wide Box subscription. The existing subscription ends on March 1. Prior to that date, all University Box users will lose access to Box (and any data left on Box). This post explains what will happen on the Globus end of things.

When will Globus for Box stop working?

On February 28, Globus for Box will stop working.

For individual users, Globus for Box will stop working when your Box account is deactivated. When that happens, you will be unable to access Box through Globus, and any in-progress transfers will start to show errors.

On February 28, Globus for Box will be deleted, and will stop working for everyone. At that time, any in-progress transfers will stop.

If you have the Stanford Box Globus connection in your favorites, you should remove it at this time. Should Box ever come back University-wide, a new Globus collection would be created, so it’s not worth saving your bookmark.

What about Medicine Box?

If you are a Medicine Box user, then with regards to Globus, nothing changes.

Stanford’s announcement does not affect Medicine Box users. If you have a Medicine Box account, your access is not being impacted by this change, with one exception: If you were collaborating with University Box users, that will stop working.

However, even though Medicine Box continues to exist, access to Medicine Box—through Globus—has been blocked for security reasons. You are already unable to use Globus with Medicine Box today, and that will not change.

What about individual Box accounts?

It is possible to pay for an Individual, Personal, or Business (non-Enterprise) Box account. “individual Box accounts” refers to those types of accounts.

The existing Stanford Box Globus collection was only ever configured to work with University Box, and cannot be reconfigured to work with other Box accounts. (That includes both individual Box accounts, and Medicine Box accounts, which are a type of Enterprise account).

It is possible for Globus to work with individual Box accounts. Before offering this service, we are waiting for guidance from the Information Security Office on the acceptability of individual Box accounts. If you are interested in using Globus with an individual Box account, please email us with your use case.