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Title
Fontys ICT runs a six-month, 300-user pilot of an EU-first multi-provider AI gateway platform
…ress the fragmented, high-risk and inequitable adoption of commercial AI tools, we designed and operated an institutional AI platform in a six-month, 300-user pilot. The aim was to demonstrate that a university of applied sciences can offer adva…
Description
Fontys ICT, a Dutch university of applied sciences, designed and operated an institutional AI platform in a six-month, 300-user pilot. It combines an OpenWebUI frontend with single sign-on, a Portkey gateway that enforces access, budgets and EU-first routing, and a model catalog spanning Azure AI Foundry EU regions, GreenPT on French datacenters, Fontys-operated hardware in the Netherlands, and US providers behind explicit consent. The authors report the platform ran reliably with no privacy incidents and strong user adoption.
…ress the fragmented, high-risk and inequitable adoption of commercial AI tools, we designed and operated an institutional AI platform in a six-month, 300-user pilot. The aim was to demonstrate that a university of applied sciences can offer adva…
…tudents encounter in professional practice. 4. Gateway architecture (selected). A multi-provider gateway allowed us to preserve model diversity while enforcing institutional policy on access, budgeting, and EU-first routing. The gateway decouples pedagogy from vendor roadmaps and turns compliance into c…
…pilot showed that this layered approach works technically and organisationally. The platform ran reliably, with no privacy incidents and strong user adoption. It enabled the institution to steer traffic towards EU infrastructure by defaul…
Company
Fontys ICT
…d Claude Sonnet 4.5 References Part I: Why We Built This The Fontys ICT Context Fontys ICT is a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands where students, researchers, and teaching staff work on real-world challenges i…
Country
Netherlands
…d Claude Sonnet 4.5 References Part I: Why We Built This The Fontys ICT Context Fontys ICT is a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands where students, researchers, and teaching staff work on real-world challenges i…
Region
Europe
…d Claude Sonnet 4.5 References Part I: Why We Built This The Fontys ICT Context Fontys ICT is a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands where students, researchers, and teaching staff work on real-world challenges i…
Industry
Education
…d Claude Sonnet 4.5 References Part I: Why We Built This The Fontys ICT Context Fontys ICT is a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands where students, researchers, and teaching staff work on real-world challenges i…
Problem
Students and faculty used a patchwork of commercial AI tools, which created unequal access depending on personal budgets, loss of visibility over AI spending, and unclear data-processing locations and retention. Fontys ICT needed a way to offer AI that is equitable, transparent and aligned with European law.
…taff, transparent risks, controlled costs and full alignment with European law. Commercial AI subscriptions proved incompatible with that mission. They create unequal access, because only those who can pay receive robust AI support, and they introduce serious compliance risks through opaque data processing, no…
…ividual commercial subscriptions—some reimbursed by the institution, others not—the institution loses all visibility into total AI spending, cannot track return on investment, and creates administrative overhead process…
…nerous free tiers, not their privacy posture. The result: fragmented contracts, unclear data-processing locations, unknown retention windows, and no way for faculty to verify which tools touched submitted work. Instituti…
Solution
Fontys ICT built a governed three-layer gateway platform: an OpenWebUI frontend with single sign-on through Azure Active Directory, a Portkey gateway that enforces access, budgets and EU-first routing, and a provider layer with a model catalog (Azure AI Foundry EU regions, GreenPT on French datacenters, Fontys-operated hardware in the Netherlands, and US providers such as Anthropic behind explicit consent). Each model has a model card and consent flow.
…r solution is a governed gateway platform with three tightly integrated layers: Frontend : A familiar, ChatGPT-style interface tied to institutional identity (single sign-on). It gives every student and staff member the same secure entry point to AI, make…
…way provider-specific authentication, request formatting, and response parsing. The platform currently integrates Azure AI Foundry for EU-hosted models including GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, and Mistral variants with guaranteed Swedish or German datacenter processing. We integrate GreenPT for EU-based hosting in datacenters powered by renewable e…
…outes through Azure’s Swedish region, Mistral models through Azure Germany, and GreenPT serves open-source models from Scaleway’s renewable-powered datacenters in France. These defaults keep most traffic within European jurisdiction. When only US hos…
…s. For workloads involving sensitive educational data or industry partnerships, we route through the gateway to models running on Fontys-operated hardware in the Netherlands. The gateway logs metadata (timestamps, token counts) for governance, while infe…
…n an accident. Provider Layer : A catalog of commercial and open-source models. Each model is wrapped in an institutional model card and consent flow that spell out capabilities, limitations, costs, hosting location and risk prof…
Business value
The authors report that in the six-month, 300-user pilot the platform ran reliably, with no privacy incidents and strong user adoption, and that it let the institution steer traffic towards EU infrastructure by default and manage usage and spending across groups and projects. The report gives no quantified usage figures in the portion read.
…pilot showed that this layered approach works technically and organisationally. The platform ran reliably, with no privacy incidents and strong user adoption. It enabled the institution to steer traffic towards EU infrastructure by default, to manage usage and spending across groups and projects and to make model choices transparent to users. At the same time, it highlighted that neither commercial licensing, consortium…
AI capabilities
Generative AI
…is a conscious, documented exception rather than an accident. Provider Layer : A catalog of commercial and open-source models. Each model is wrapped in an institutional model card and consent flow that spel…
Technology
OpenWebUI, Portkey, Azure AI Foundry, GreenPT
…y for Multi-Provider Coordination The gateway layer turns governance into code. We chose Portkey (over custom and other commercial gateways) because it unifies provider integrations, issues scoped API keys with budget li…
…way, and provider layers Frontend Layer: OpenWebUI for Familiar User Experience For the initial pilot we selected OpenWebUI (after evaluating LibreChat and custom-built interfaces) because it integrates…
…way provider-specific authentication, request formatting, and response parsing. The platform currently integrates Azure AI Foundry for EU-hosted models including GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, and Mistral variants with guaranteed Swedish or German datacenter processing. We integrate GreenPT for EU-based hosting in datacenters powered by renewable e…
…outes through Azure’s Swedish region, Mistral models through Azure Germany, and GreenPT serves open-source models from Scaleway’s renewable-powered datacenters in France. These defaults keep most traffic within European jurisdiction. When only US hos…
Deployment options
hybrid, cloud, On-premise
…s. For workloads involving sensitive educational data or industry partnerships, we route through the gateway to models running on Fontys-operated hardware in the Netherlands. The gateway logs metadata (timestamps, token counts) for governance, while infe…
…way provider-specific authentication, request formatting, and response parsing. The platform currently integrates Azure AI Foundry for EU-hosted models including GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, and Mistral variants with guaranteed Swedish or German datacenter processing. We integrate GreenPT for EU-based hosting in datacenters powered by renewable e…
Headline outcome
…pilot showed that this layered approach works technically and organisationally. The platform ran reliably, with no privacy incidents and strong user adoption. It enabled the institution to steer traffic towards EU infrastructure by defaul…
Use case type
Conversational assistant
…is a governed gateway platform with three tightly integrated layers: Frontend : A familiar, ChatGPT-style interface tied to institutional identity (single sign-on). It gives every student and staff member the same secure entry point to AI, make…
