Universities are becoming data platforms. Infrastructure will determine what they can achieve

(April 2026) The modern university is no longer confined to physical campuses. Teaching, research, and collaboration now depend on how data is stored, accessed, and moved—often across distributed systems beyond lecture halls and libraries.

That shift raises the stakes for IT infrastructure. As research becomes more data-intensive, institutions must handle unpredictable demand, avoid system failures, and support new workloads such as AI model training.

Marcin Woźniak, Deputy Director of CzęstMAN, and Tomasz Chmiel, Chief IT Specialist, are working at the center of that transition. The regional research and education network, operated by Częstochowa University of Technology, forms part of Poland’s national research infrastructure.

In a Transform Talks interview with Huawei’s Executive Editor-in-Chief, Gavin Allen, they argue that infrastructure must be designed from the outset to be both data-ready and resilient. They explain why storage is becoming a strategic priority, how their network is evolving for AI-era demands, and what it takes to build a digital foundation that can support research over the long term.