The brief
The network had been running on a stack of four off-the-shelf SaaS tools, one for video, one for documents, one for project briefs, one for whiteboarding, each with a different data-residency posture and a different procurement cycle. Operationally it worked. Legally it was an annual headache. The brief was to consolidate, on a stack that could be operated as a single contract and audited as a single estate.
What we did
We deployed BrollyHub Academia, Huddle, and Shelves as a single co-branded tenancy. The network became the operator; the member institutions joined federated through their existing IdPs. Active collaborations on the legacy stack were migrated in waves, with a six-week overlap window where both stacks were available so principal investigators could move on their own schedule.
- › A single co-branded surface across Platform, Huddle, and Shelves.
- › Per-institution audit boundaries inside one network-owned tenancy.
- › A migration toolchain that preserved meeting recordings, document version history, and collaboration metadata.
- › A network-level dashboard for cross-institution analytics, gated on consent.
Outcome
The legacy stack was retired by the end of the academic year. Active collaborations moved without loss; the network office now manages a single contract and a single audit boundary. Two further institutions joined the network in the following cycle, drawn in part by the new collaboration surface.