By 2025 the most popular Microsoft Office products fall out of support, including the most widely used Office versions: Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019. Microsoft’s recommendation? Move, of course, to their subscription-only Microsoft 365 offering which changes the scope of data privacy, access, and the financial relationship SME’s depend on — becoming subject to sudden price changes, like the previous up-to-25% price hikes.

We believe there’s a need for a real alternative.

The clock is ticking

Currently more than 80% of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) in Germany use Microsoft Office packages that will have reached end-of-life next year, including Office 2016 and Office 2019. Essentially, «support for Office 2016 and Office 2019 will end on October 14, 2025 and there will be no extension and no extended security updates.» states Microsoft. Without an upgrade «you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks.» And… they’re right.

Why businesses hesitate with Microsoft 365

Microsoft’s recommendation to move to Microsoft 365 carries significant implications for essential everyday office tools in enterprises. Data show that enterprises are hesitating to upgrade, with market share of Office 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2019 remaining stable in the last 24 months. Why the hesitation to upgrade?

We can think of a few reasons.

The financial implications

The soon-to-expire versions of Microsoft Office follow the traditional licensing model, which SMEs expect and appreciate for it’s predictability. With Microsoft’s suggested move to Office 365, that model gets thrown away for the monthly subscription model with cloud services. Which leads us to question…

Price control: increased prices at any time

There’s an incentive to lock you into recurring pricing through subscriptions that cause price control: the ability for them to raise prices at any point, leaving SMEs at the mercy of their new subscription overlords.

The reason this is so effective?

Cancelling is painful: the vendor lock-in guarantee

Subscription models provide a perfect vendor lock-in scenario, creating this dependency and making it both difficult and costly to switch providers if the service does not meet expectations. Another step to this vendor lock-in includes the technical challenges associated with a massive migration from a subscription service.

What about my data privacy?

Is it acceptable that internal documents, Intellectual Property, and private communications are the new building blocks for Microsoft’s AI models?

Moving to Microsoft 365 also drastically changes the expectations of data privacy, sovereignty, and transparency. With the suggestion to move the entire office suite to Microsoft’s cloud, your data may no longer be solely yours.

Microsoft’s Privacy Statement even states «As part of our efforts to improve and develop our products, we may use your data to develop and train our AI models.»

Even the European Commission this year was found to infringe on its own EU data protection laws through its use of Microsoft 365, which «failed […] to ensure that personal data transferred outside the EU are afforded an essentially equivalent level of protection as guaranteed in the EU.»

Nextcloud Office: refreshing alternative to Microsoft technologies

Nextcloud Office presents a migration path that addresses all of these Big Tech problems, from the grips of vendor lock-in to the critical data privacy concerns. It’s your ideal Microsoft 365 alternative!

By allowing self-hosting on secure and self-controlled servers, or with trusted sovereign cloud hosting partners, Nextcloud Office prioritizes your data sovereignty and GDPR compliance. This gives Nextcloud an edge over Microsoft 365, where data is stored on Microsoft’s servers and may be subject to access by US authorities.

In addition to real-time collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, Nextcloud Office also seamlessly integrates with other Nextcloud apps like Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud Groupware applications, enhancing overall team productivity.

Success in Germany’s federal state

From the public sector, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany migrated away from the grasp of subscription models into Nextcloud’s suite of open source, data sovereign solutions including Nextcloud Office. This transition has been explored in details by Schleswig-Holstein’s CIO Sven Thomsen in a recent episode of the Nextcloud Podcast.

With the adoption of Nextcloud Office in the last years, the value proposition that Nextcloud put into place totally changed for us: Nextcloud migrated in our view from a simple OneDrive alternative to becoming our central hub for collaboration and collaborative document editing. From an IT operations point of view, Nextcloud being open source is the perfect implementation path as a new solution.

Sven Thomsen

CIO of Schleswig-Holstein

Migrating to Nextcloud? Let us help!

We can directly help you migrate to Nextcloud Enterprise or to one of our trusted partners. We offer support for migration from a multitude of platforms, and encourage you to contact our sales team.

To smooth the transition, Nextcloud also supports many Microsoft integrations to make the journey a success!

Nextcloud Office: Your new path forward

As Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 reach their end-of-life milestones, SMEs face a critical decision, and an opportunity for a better path forward.

An upgrade to Nextcloud Office prioritizes your data privacy, sovereignty, compliance, and vendor lock-in freedoms. Our open source suite of solutions allows SMEs to maintain control over their sensitive business information and avoid the risks associated with Big Tech’s cloud-based services.

Don’t get left behind by the changing landscape of Microsoft’s products. Join the growing community of organizations that have successfully migrated to Nextcloud Office.

Take control of your data and your future.

Explore Nextcloud Office

Your update journey to a more private and collaborative document editing.

Learn more!

The post Nextcloud Office: your privacy upgrade as Microsoft Office end-of-life approaches appeared first on Nextcloud.

It gives me joy and recharges my batteries if at the end of the day I can see other people succeed.

Andy Scherzinger

Nextcloud’s Director of Engineering

From his approach to problem-solving and guiding others to his personal values that give him direction, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, community, and personal growth.

Episode Links

• AndyScherzinger – GitHub
• Andy Scherzinger | LinkedIn
• The Nextclouder’s Journey with Julien Veyssier – Nextcloud Podcast
• Develop for Nextcloud: App development tutorials
• Nextcloud Enterprise: Content collaboration software for enterprises
• Ethical use of AI: five major challenges
• Google Graveyard – Killed by Google
• Nextcloud – GitHub

The post Empowering through open source: Nextcloud’s Director of Engineering Andy Scherzinger appeared first on Nextcloud.

About the updates

The updates include a number of important bug fixes and performance optimization, as well as other improvements in all supported Nextcloud Hub versions. You can find the full changelog on our website.

Updates are available for:

• Nextcloud Hub 7 (version 28.0.13)
• Nextcloud Hub 8 (version 29.0.10)
• Nextcloud Hub 9 (version 30.0.2)

Nextcloud Hub 9 is our latest and greatest!

Nextcloud Hub 9 lets you stay connected like never before: federated calls, auto-magic with Nextcloud Flow, collaboration through a new medium with Nextloud Whiteboard, a big design redo and much more!

What’s new in Nextcloud Hub 9:

• Federation: Edit documents and have video calls with users from other Nextcloud servers!
• Automate and digitalize enterprise processes
• Brand new design improvements
• New Whiteboard app
• AI reminders & summaries in Mail
• PDF templates and form API
• Chat UI for Nextcloud Assistant

Get Nextcloud Hub 9

Download and install Nextcloud Hub 9 here!

Get Hub 9

Always keep your server up to date!

Nextcloud’s minor releases primarily focus on addressing security vulnerabilities and functionality bugs, avoiding major system overhauls that could jeopardize user data. Keeping your server up to date is vital, and our approach to testing and validation ensures that upgrading to minor releases is generally smooth and reliable.

For mission-critical Nextcloud systems in enterprise settings, consider switching to Nextcloud Enterprise. The tier provides you with ultimate deployment confidence: direct access to the Nextcloud engineering team, full assistance throughout deployment and integration, and peace of mind for system administrators. If you’re responsible for maintaining Nextcloud in your setting, this option may be the ideal solution for you.

The post December maintenance updates for Nextcloud Hub 7, 8 and 9 appeared first on Nextcloud.

Amidst geo-political changes, organizations face dependencies on large, centralized communication platforms. A major example of this is the SaaS-only communication platform Microsoft Teams. It is the only solution on the market which deeply integrates video calls, team chat and large group call features with real-time document collaboration and file sharing, and has become critical to the functioning of many organizations. Which, in turn, has allowed Microsoft to hike prices by 20 to 40% and not face an exodus of customers – as they and their data are fully locked in.

Organisations, small and large, need a way to ensure the resiliency and digital sovereignty of their operations – an open source, privacy respecting alternative to Teams. And today, we present that solution.

In this short webinar, Jos walks you through how Nextcloud Talk takes on Microsoft Teams!

Welcome to Nextcloud Talk

Today, live from our Enterprise day in Paris, we launch Nextcloud Talk „Paris“. It is the only open-source solution that integrates all key features – from chats and video conferencing to webinars, complete with file sharing and office document editing – into a single platform while avoiding vendor lock-in.

Our platform meets the highest standards of compliance with privacy legislations like GDPR or HIPAA and offers strict data security, ensuring full data control. Thanks to its open architecture, Talk can be seamlessly integrated into existing systems and tailored to individual needs.

Nextcloud Talk is designed to address three key use cases. Let’s go quickly over them!

Efficient team chat

The integrated chat in Nextcloud Talk is designed to help teams stay connected throughout the workday. With multiple chat rooms and the ability to edit files directly within the chat, Talk streamlines hybrid team collaboration and boosts efficiency. End-to-end encryption ensures that calls remain private and secure, while integrated real-time notifications keep everyone in the loop. All data stays under your control, meeting the highest privacy and security standards.

It features deep integration with a wide variety of content. Users can add documents – and edit them right there, inline, without having to open tabs or download the file. Locations, tasks, calendars and notes can all be inserted, viewed and edited without leaving Talk.

Video calls for seamless collaboration

Nextcloud Talk makes virtual meetings easy and accessible across devices. Whether it’s a quick check-in or a larger team meeting, our platform ensures powerful collaboration for hybrid working teams. Features like integrated whiteboards, screen sharing, and joint document editing make real-time collaboration easier than ever. Scheduling and joining calls is effortless, directly from the Nextcloud interface, integrated with the calendar app for easy scheduling of meetings.

Interactive webinars, education and training sessions

Talk enables you to host engaging webinars – bringing audiences like teams, students, or customers together. The platform supports live streaming, Q&A sessions and screensharing and comes with moderation features. Functions like the integrated chat, animated reactions, polls and breakout rooms make the learning experience more interactive and fun. All this, and more, is available wherever you are. Not only in the browser, but also with apps on iOS and Android! When your colleague calls you while you’re out, your phone will ring and you’ll be able to share your screen to show them a quick presentation you’re working on.

You can give participants a phone number to dial in to, and even pull them in by dialing out right from Talk. Need to add hundreds, even thousands of participants? Simply import a spreadsheet. After the call, you export the participant list and see who did and did not show up!

Break up big groups in breakout rooms, enabling everyone to be productive in a smaller team before coming back together to the big group. In your breakout room you can do a call, chat, work on a whiteboard, share documents and more!

Numerous new features for better collaboration

New desktop app

No more searching through browser tabs! The new app offers desktop integration and notifications, allowing users to communicate and join calls effortlessly.

New AI features

Tired of taking notes in long meetings? Enjoy our automatically generated summaries of video meetings! Dreading those 173 unread messages in the morning? The Nextcloud Assistant summarizes them for you. Less work, less stress!

Visual collaboration

The interactive whiteboard enables teams to brainstorm and develop ideas in real-time – ideal for workshops and project planning.

Plan your polls

You can now save a poll as a draft, for quick publishing when the class has started. Need to use the same poll in a different class? Simply export it as a file and import it in the new room. At the end, export the poll as image or spreadsheet. Easy as pie!

Simplified teamwork

Documents can be collaboratively edited directly within chats or video calls. No need to switch to another window or tab! You can easily find chat messages with the search, leave and join open chat rooms or archive the ones you no longer follow, so you stay as connected as you need to be.

Let colleagues know what you think with reactions to chat messages, or animated reactions during calls. And if you need to make a point, you can use bold, italics, headers and even tables in your messages.

Mindfulness features

To promote a healthy meeting culture, Nextcloud Talk has a series of small features that help you be mindful of yourself and others. You can send silent chat messages and even start silent calls which don’t send notifications to everyone. User status communicates to colleagues if you’re available or not – the status will automatically change when you are in a call or have an appointment in your calendar, and your time zone is visible for others.

Need to deal with something – but not right now? You can mark a chat as unread, but also set a reminder on an individual message. You’ll get a notification at the time you set! You can also send a message to a special ‘Note to self’ chat, or put notes there by hand. Keep things organized for yourself. Perhaps favorite your Note to self chat so it’s always on top with other important chats?

You can also set your work hours and enable do-not-disturb outside those hours. Calls give a warning at the 1h mark and can now automatically end after a set time. And, during calls, you can see how much each participant talked so you can make sure even the quiet team members get to have their say.

High-security communication

Nextcloud Talk meets the highest security standards and can even be deployed in airgap environments, keeping all communication strictly away from the internet.

A glimpse into the future of collaboration

With Nextcloud Talk, we empower companies and public institutions to work securely and productively – regardless of their location or infrastructure. The platform is ideal for on premise installations or hosting by local cloud providers, giving companies and organizations full control over their data.

Finally, the open source community has a real answer to Microsoft Teams.

Learn more at the Talk webpage, or join our upcoming webinar to find out how Talk can replace Teams for your organization!

The post The open source answer to Microsoft Teams appeared first on Nextcloud.

AI tools woven into the big tech ecosystems, some more “open” than others, some more quiet, often require a silent sacrifice in exchange for easy-to-access technology. An alternative is open-source AI models which, much like open-source software, have a potential to give you more transparency and control.

You can study and even modify the model you are using, and if you don’t need that — at least understand how your data is processed, stored and shared. Sounds like something the viral AI photo editing apps can’t promise, yet millions keep giving them access to their private photos every day.

Join us as we explore how open-source AI benefits users and, from the perspective of our Ethical AI rating, provide examples of AI models that can help you reclaim your privacy.

What are open-source AI models?

With more people becoming aware of how data economy works, earning user’s trust becomes more challenging to the AI providers. To appeal to more conscious users, many AI vendors label their technology open or open-source. But without consensus on what open-source AI is, such open-washing could raise many risks: surveillance, information bias, effects on the labor market and creative industries, and excessive energy usage — to name a few.

In attempt to battle the potentially harmful trend, the Open Source Initiative released its official Open Source Artificial Intelligence Definition (OSAID). According to the OSAID, an Open Source AI is an AI system made available under terms and in a way that grant the freedoms to:

• Use the system for any purpose and without having to ask for permission.
• Study how the system works and inspect its components.
• Modify the system for any purpose, including to change its output.
• Share the system for others to use with or without modifications, for any purpose.

Even though the work on this definition has been endorsed by many companies and individuals, there’s no consensus in the community on whether or not to accept it in its current state, or if the open-source AI is even ready to be defined.

We too think there’s room for improvement. But with or without concrete definition for the OS AI, we can tell how four main freedoms of open-source – to use, to study, to modify, and to share – can impact life of the the AI users.

How do users benefit from open-source AI?

Open source promotes freedom and empowers users to control their software – in this case, the AI – they rely on. Here are several examples of opens-source AI systems could directly benefit you as a user:

• Proprietary AI can include hidden features like data harvesting for advertising and user profiling, embedded biases, and using your private data to refine the products without your consent. Open-source lets you make sure there are no hidden features or data backdoors – because you (and thousands, or even millions of others) can inspect the source code and understand how the software operates.
• If your software is not anymore supported by a provider, you may lose valuable data like your AI’s memory of interactions. And even though normally you can export this data, there’s no guarantee it will be compatible with alternative models. With open-source, you don’t rely on a single vendor – the software will continue to exist, and you will retain full ownership. Moreover, you are not locked in the provider’s ecosystem of applications in order to fully benefit from their AI, no-one controls your costs, your updates and maintenance.
• You can host your AI yourself or with a provider you trust, which means you fully control your data, make own decisions for your privacy, and maintain your compliance instead of relying on third-party services.

Nextcloud Ethical AI rating

At Nextcloud, we employ and integrate AI tools ourselves and we realize the risks brought by the evolving computer intelligence. That’s why we created the Ethical AI Rating that helps our users make the right decisions about what AI models to use in their work. It is more granular than the OSAID and more critical in areas like training data availability. For now, we will keep using it as it resonates with the unique needs of Nextcloud users.

Nextcloud Ethical AI Rating is based on three principles:

• Whether the training data is available and is free to use
• Whether the software (both for inferencing and training) is open-source
• Whether the trained model freely available for self-hosting

Based on how many of the criteria are met, a model receives Red , Orange , Yellow or Green rating.

Looking for open-source AI models to try? Consider these!

Nextcloud is not primarily an AI developer or vendor, so we don’t promote any AI products. Instead, we want to help our users choose the right tools to protect their privacy, and where needed, help them start using those tools through Nextcloud Hub. From the perspective of our Ethical AI Rating, here are several AI models that help you take control of your privacy.

Open-source LLMs via LocalAI

With LocalAI, you can use several open-source models like GPT-Neo or GPT-J, running them locally with ability to modify and interact with them on your server. In this case, the app also gets the Green rating in our Ethical AI rating, fully meeting the criteria.

OpenNMT

OpenNMT is a fully open-source AI translation framework available under MIT license. In Nextcloud, it can be used via LibreTranslate app that offers translation via your own server/API key.

Opus

Opus is a machine translation provider by University of Helsinki that runs locally on CPU and doesn’t let any private data leaves your servers. It meets all criteria of our rating.

GPT4All Falcon by Nomic AI

GPT4All Falcon is an LLM that combines the Falcon language model with the GPT4All interface. It is available under Apache 2.0 license and runs locally on CPU.

There are models that do not match the criteria of the Green rating, but can be worth considering since they are self-hosted and have very permissive licenses, making them mostly safe to run locally:

Self-hosted Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion is open-source model licensed under CreativeML Open RAIL-M License. Users have full access to the model and its code, can modify and redistribute it, given that it’s an on premise version. In Nextcloud, self-hosted Stable Diffusion can be used via LocalAI. We give it a Yellow rating, as the training data is not freely available in this case.

Whisper

In Nextcloud, you can use Whisper to enable speech-to-text conversion features. Whisper is available under the MIT License and has a Yellow rating due to limited availability of the training data.

Llama 2

Llama 2 is a free LLM by Meta that can be run on premise, and the software for training and inference of this model is open source. However, the training data is not freely available. It is offered under Llama 2 Community License.

We don’t limit our users’ choice of AI tools, and there are other models and apps that you can integrate in Nextcloud Hub and use with Nextcloud Assistant, including self-hosted models like NeuralBeagle14 7B, Smaug-72B and Meta’s Llama 3. Or famous AI like ChatGPT, DALL·E or Aleph Alpha – which are far from meeting all the criteria of our rating, but you still can easily integrate them in Nextcloud if you wish.

Build your own private AI platform – with Nextcloud Hub

Nextcloud Assistant is the first local AI assistant built into collaboration platform. It is integrated everywhere across Nextcloud Hub, helping you with your daily tasks while taking care of your privacy. Among tools supported by Nextcloud Assistant are chat with AI, text and image generation, email summaries, translation, dictation, inquiring about your own data with Context Chat, automated document creation with Context Write, and much more.

You can integrate AI models of your choice to enable those tools, creating a custom AI-powered environment according to your your privacy and security needs. And if needed, you can host your AI with one of the trusted SaaS providers in Europe, staying fully compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR and others.

Get Nextcloud Hub

AI-powered open-source collaboration platform that puts you back in control over your data.

Get Nextcloud Hub

The post How open-source AI models can help you take control of your privacy appeared first on Nextcloud.

On the eve of the Open Source Experience, we invite you to the Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris, Nextcloud’s flagship event for professionals. An afternoon of discussions, networking, inspiring presentations, and exclusive announcements awaits you, featuring open-source leaders and experts in collaborative solutions.

Inspiring keynotes and an big Nextcloud Talk announcement

The Enterprise Day Paris kicks off with a keynote from our CEO and founder, Frank Karlitschek. He shares our vision for the future our vision for the future of online collaboration, followed by a major announcement for Nextcloud Talk! This is your chance to learn more about our latest innovations and ask all your questions directly to Frank Karlitschek and the Nextcloud team.

Next, hear inspiring testimonials from clients and partners as they share their success stories and real-world experiences with Nextcloud. These discussions, held in both English and French, provide a great opportunity to explore the benefits of Nextcloud in a variety of contexts.

Keep on reading for the full program of the Nextcloud Enterprise Day!

A networking space to connect with our experts

During the entire day, our networking space will give you a chance to connect with Nextcloud experts ready to advise you and answer all your questions, as well as our key partners and sponsors of the event.

Why attend the Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris?

The Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris is not just a networking event — it’s an opportunity to learn from the success of industry professionals, share your own experiences, and engage with the team behind Nextcloud.

The Nextcloud Enterprise Day experience includes:

• Insights into the Nextcloud roadmap and an exclusive preview of the upcoming major update of Nextcloud Talk.
• A deep dive into the new features and improvements that will help you boost your instance.
• AI in Nextcloud: The most requested developments and the latest features to enhance your platform.
• Real-world case studies presented by Nextcloud users from various industries and different types of businesses.
• Strategies for optimizing your platform for peak performance with the Nextcloud leadership team.
• A friendly meet-up with peers, industry leaders, and experts to expand your network and foster collaborations.
• Exclusive Q&A session and a chance to meet with Nextcloud’s Senior Management.

Great location in the heart of Paris

The event will be held at Espace La Rochefoucauld, a modern and accessible venue in the heart of Paris. Located just steps away from major transport routes, this space is an ideal place for rich and inspiring exchanges, in a city that embodies both tradition and innovation.

Highlights of the program: plan out your day!

The Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris will take place on Tuesday, December 3, 2024. The main program will run from 1:30 PM to 6:00 PM CET, with regular breaks for refreshments and networking.

The day will conclude with a casual cocktail reception. The tentative program below will be regularly updated on the dedicated Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris page.

13:00	Welcome reception for participants, coffee and tea. Meet our partners and Nextcloud experts.
13:30	Welcome: Introduction to Nextcloud by Frank Karlitschek, CEO and Founder of Nextcloud.
14:00	«Connecter un Demi-Million de personne avec Leviia et Nextcloud» – Guy Daroles, Project Director at Monlycee.net and William Meauzoone, Co-founder Leviia»
14:20	«Nextcloud basé sur MariaDB : Une solution évolutive et hautement disponible» – Sebastien Giraud, Senior Solution Engineer at MariaDB
14:40	Break and networking
15:10	Nextcloud Talk Keynote
15:40	«EUniWell adopte Nextcloud en mode SaaS avec TAS Cloud Services pour la collaboration à distance de ses 11 Universités Européennes» – Youssef Araqi Houssaini and Matthieu Charton.»
16:00	«Bridging Nextcloud with Microsoft via Sendent» – Richard Marx, Co-founder at Sendent
16:20	Break and networking
16:50	«Libérez vos Documents» – Car Méven, Software Engineer at Collabora
17:10	«Ayming : Nextcloud un remplaçant de SharePoint dans le secteur privé» – Xavier Quilliet, CIO at Ayming and Guy-Christian Facia, Consultant at Arawa
17:30	«Présentation des solutions XWiki et de leur intégration dans Nextcloud» – Clément Aubin, Sales Director at Xwiki
18:00 21:00	Cocktails

Meet our sponsors and partners

We are thrilled to be supported by trusted sponsors: MariaDB, Arawa, IONOS, Leviia, and TAS Cloud Services. Come meet them at the event to discover their offerings and learn how they strengthen the Nextcloud ecosystem.

Book your place now to make sure you don’t miss out on Enterprise Day Paris.

Only a few spots left.

The post Nextcloud Enterprise Day lands in Paris: be part of the product launch event! appeared first on Nextcloud.

Nextcloud has been recognized with the World Summit Award Germany in the Government & Citizen Engagement category. WSA selects and promotes local digital innovation improving society, aiming to contribute to the United Nations’ agenda of sustainable development goals. In addition, Nextcloud is shortlisted for the World Summit Awards on a global level. The winners will be announced in January 2025.

What this award means for Nextcloud

The digital collaboration platform has been recognized for excelling in data sovereignty and giving customers and users control over their data. Nextcloud builds an open source platform for people to store their files, chat and videoconference, manage calendars, emails and more, that is not run by a single entity. Using a web interface and mobile apps, users don’t have to hand over their data to anybody else. Users, companies and governments can use Nextcloud software to build their own clouds, in a very easy way. And – hundreds of thousands have.

Data is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of companies. This is not good for society – especially with the rise of AI. Privacy is the foundation of democracy and society does not function well if all communication and collaboration is mediated by a few democratically unaccountable entities.

Frank Karlitschek

Founder and CEO of Nextcloud

Digital sovereignty for millions of users

Nextcloud is deeply rooted in the open source community and has become the most popular self-hosted alternative to the collaboration platforms of big tech companies. There are an estimated 500,000 servers on the internet running Nextcloud, some of these with millions of users. We do not track users but estimate to have between 25 and 50 million users in total.

For the business side, besides companies and other organzations, more than 600 EU institutions, federal and state ministries, as well as city and local governments globally rely on Nextcloud, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, Canada, Australia, Brazil and the USA. The most popular self-hosted collaboration solution for 2 million users in the public sector and tens of millions of users overall around the globe.

To help the German public sector digitalise their services for citizens, Nextcloud has rolled out several efforts. Latest example is the launch of Nextcloud Flow, the first fully open source, integrated process automation platform.

WSA awards digital solutions with impact on society

The World Summit Awards (WSA) aim to promote the best digital solutions with impact on society. It is a non-monetary award system with a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. The award was launched in 2003 and aims to contribute to the United Nations’ agenda of sustainable development goals by recognizing local digital content with societal impact and showcasing the wealth and diversity of innovative applications.

The post Nextcloud Recognized with World Summit Award Germany appeared first on Nextcloud.

About the updates

The updates include a number of important bug fixes and performance optimization, as well as other improvements in all supported Nextcloud Hub versions. You can find the full changelog on our website.

Updates are available for:

• Nextcloud Hub 7 (version 28.0.12)
• Nextcloud Hub 9 (version 30.0.2)

Nextcloud Hub 9 is our latest and greatest!

Nextcloud Hub 9 lets you stay connected like never before: federated calls, auto-magic with Nextcloud Flow, collaboration through a new medium with Nextloud Whiteboard, a big design redo and much more!

What’s new in Nextcloud Hub 9:

• Federation: Edit documents and have video calls with users from other Nextcloud servers!
• Automate and digitalize enterprise processes
• Brand new design improvements
• New Whiteboard app
• AI reminders & summaries in Mail
• PDF templates and form API
• Chat UI for Nextcloud Assistant

Get Nextcloud Hub 9

Download and install Nextcloud Hub 9 here!

Get Hub 9

Always keep your server up to date!

Nextcloud’s minor releases primarily focus on addressing security vulnerabilities and functionality bugs, avoiding major system overhauls that could jeopardize user data. Keeping your server up to date is vital, and our approach to testing and validation ensures that upgrading to minor releases is generally smooth and reliable.

For mission-critical Nextcloud systems in enterprise settings, consider switching to Nextcloud Enterprise. The tier provides you with ultimate deployment confidence: direct access to the Nextcloud engineering team, full assistance throughout deployment and integration, and peace of mind for system administrators. If you’re responsible for maintaining Nextcloud in your setting, this option may be the ideal solution for you.

The post November maintenance updates for Nextcloud Hub 7 and 9 appeared first on Nextcloud.

One week is left until Nextcloud Enterprise day, and good things come to those who wait! As you are planning your trip to Frankfurt, we are happy to announce an amazing talk by Dr. Frank Dengler.

• Speaker: Frank Dengler, CEO and founder of audriga
• Title: Migrating from SharePoint to Nextcloud: What we’ve learned

Transitioning the organization’s collaborative environment from SharePoint to Nextcloud is a complex project, successfully undertaken by organizations like Swiss Bank and the Schleswig-Holstein state administration. How exactly do you make such a migration both achievable and efficient? Dr. Dengler argues that a well-prepared and structured approach is key to a successful migration, and he is going to share some of his insights in this special session.

Join Nextcloud Enterprise Day on November 6 in Frankfurt, Germany. Register today!

About the speaker

audriga is a globally recognized expert in email, groupware, and storage migration. They support companies of all sizes, including hosting providers and telcos, with white-label self-service solutions for customer onboarding and large-scale platform migrations involving millions of user accounts. audriga can migrate almost any type of data, such as files, contacts, calendar, tasks, metadata, and settings, between virtually any systems — including migrations from SharePoint to Nextcloud.

Frank Dengler is a co-founder and currently serve as the CEO of audriga. His professional journey began at Intel, where he worked as a consultant in the server and data center division. He holds an interdisciplinary degree in Information Engineering and Management, as well as a PhD in Knowledge Management, both from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

audriga chose Nextcloud because we noticed a growing demand from customers seeking a strong alternative to SharePoint. Nextcloud stands out as a great option, not only for its robust file management capabilities but also for its additional features like collaboration tools, integrated apps, and data control, making it a comprehensive solution beyond just file storage.

About Nextcloud Enterprise Day

Nextcloud Enterprise Day is our top event of the year for business leaders, decision-makers, and project managers to achieve their goals with Nextcloud.

From customer presentations and success stories to networking opportunities and access to management, sales, marketing, and engineering teams, you’re bound to walk away with new information, techniques, and inspiration.

The upcoming edition takes place at the spectacular Radisson Blu hotel in Frankfurt, Germany on November 6.

†

The post Nextcloud Enterprise Day: key to smooth SharePoint to Nextcloud migration with Dr. Frank Dengler appeared first on Nextcloud.

Today, the Open Source Initiative has released its first official definition of Open Source AI. This is an important milestone. Let me explain why.

Why Open Source matters

The key tenet of open source is is that it puts the user in control. Software is ever growing in complexity and importance in our society. Software is how we do our work, how we communicate, how we pay, how we access information. When software is a black box, subject to subtle (or not so much) manipulation, users are at risk.

Risks of AI

AI brings these risks to an entirely new level. Not only because it makes decisions that are often entirely intransparent, but also because its easy, human like interface often lulls users to trust it far more than deserved.

The big AI firms have done their level best to ensure the attention of the public around risks with AI were aimed at existential, contrived notions akin to Skynet, the AI in the movie series Terminator, scenarios where AI would take over the world. In reality, the risks associated with AI are far more mundane. Surveillance, bias, explosive energy usage and job losses are the concerns we should focus on.

Need for control

And, just like with software, what matters is control. Who controls the AI, who makes decisions about what it can and can’t do, what goes in and what does not. With control, we can address the real risks of AI. Without control, we can simply hope that the billion dollar companies do the right thing.

They haven’t in the past. So we need Open Source AI. AI that that gives users the ability to study and modify the AI models that govern their lives.

Nextcloud Ethical AI Rating

Nextcloud gave this a first shot in March 2023, when we launched our Ethical AI Rating. A simple traffic light would show with green/yellow/orange/red if a given AI model was freely available, if its data was publicly available and if the code needed to run and train it was open source. This way we help users make an informed decision without restricting their choice of models and features.

Users of AI solutions deserve transparency and control, which is why we introduced our Ethical AI rating in early 2023. Now, we see big tech firms trying to hijack the term open source AI. We fully endorse the creation of a clear definition of open source AI by the community to protect users and the market.

Frank Karlitschek

CEO and fouder of Nextcloud

The wider open source community has picked up the gauntlet as well, and after extensive consultation with the community, today the OSI has announced an official definition of Open Source AI. This will help users, from private users, to governments, research institutes, hospitals and businesses, to make decisions what systems they can trust.

So, today, It is a first step in a journey and we are glad to be a part of it. Nextcloud has formally endorsed the definition, even if we think there is room for improvement. We will use it as a basis for our Ethical AI Rating. Our rating is a bit more granular and also more critical in some areas – for example, when it comes to data, we believe it should be always fully available – and thus, for now, we will keep using it, as it fits the use cases of our users more.

We look forward to your input, both on the OSI definition – on the road to a 2.0 – and on our AI rating.

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