At the beginning were questions: How can we provide EPFL researchers with a service to publish and preserve their research data? What do we need to consider from a technical infrastructure point of view? What skills are required from the staff? With whom will we collaborate? A first response is ACOUA – Academic Output Archive. This project aims in particular at long-term preservation. It is now running for some time and the talk will give a short overview of what happened so far, where we are and what we will do in the future.