Storing files in public clouds such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google One, and Dropbox is all well and good. I do it myself. But, if you want privacy, you’d probably want a private cloud such as the outstanding open-source Nextcloud. If you’re technically adept, you can set Nextcloud up on your own local or remote Linux server. If you’re not that guy or gal, you can arrange to have your own Nextcloud instance set up by a local services provider. Or, now if you need privacy and the backing of a big European tech company, Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest telecom, can set up your Nextcloud for you.
Starting on January 11th, Deutsche Telekom and Nextcloud GmbH are offering an enterprise-ready, Europe-hosted content collaboration platform. This will offer a scalable and comprehensive digital collaboration cloud for businesses, educational organizations, and governments. With it, your business will maintain productivity for working from home during the Covid crisis and after.
This managed cloud service is based on Nextcloud Hub 20.04. Besides providing the outstanding Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) file servers, Nextcloud is known for offering secure data and document exchange with online editing capabilities. In addition, it now comes with chat and video conferencing and task and calendar management. Your users can use it via a web browser or Linux, macOS, and Windows desktop and Android and iOS mobile applications. Your data is safely hosted in Deutsche Telekom’s’ EU data centers to guarantee your enterprise’s scalability, reliability, and security.
Why is Deutsche Telekom doing this? Hagen Rickmann, Telekom Deutschland’s Managing Director Business Customers, explained, “2021 will be a year of rebuilding our economies and the second wave of Covid-19 has further accelerated the need for remote collaboration, with many employees working from home.” So, yes this is a work from home play. But, it’s more than that.
Rickmann continued, “The increased frequency of digital attacks and risks from privacy violations have increased awareness of security and digital sovereignty. There is a clear demand from organizations and policymakers for better protection of customers’ data, more transparency around security and data storage, and respect for privacy from cloud vendors. So, we’ve partnered up to provide an open-source, 100% EU hosted, transparent and privacy-respecting collaboration platform.”
This last is an important part of the European Union GAIA-X initiative. This is an effort to create a federated European open data infrastructure.
Frank Karlitschek, Nextcloud’s CEO and Founder added: “With more and more European firms, government organizations and educational institutes using cloud services we see a constantly growing demand for European data sovereignty. In a data-driven economy, we need platforms that guarantee European data sovereignty. Together with Deutsche Telekom Nextcloud offers a credible alternative with major benefits in terms of management by trust, scalability, and adaptability.”
If parts of that sound good to you and you’re in the States, you may see a similar offering coming from T-Mobile in the future. , Deutsche Telekom now holds the largest ownership stake, approximately 43%, in T-Mobile after the T-Mobile-Sprint merger.
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