The simplest way to get started with Nextcloud

Nextcloud AIO wraps all core tools and services you need into a turnkey instance that is easy to install, maintain, and update. The interface guides you through the installation process and automates a lot of components for you so that you don’t have to do all of it yourself. This simplicity makes Nextcloud AIO a perfect deployment method when you are just getting started with Nextcloud, even without much technical experience.

But one-step deployment is not where the benefits end. Nextcloud AIO web interface gives you easy access to the overview of your instance and various management tools:

• All the apps you need are pre-integrated and tested, including Nextcloud Files, Nextcloud Talk, Nextcloud Office, backup tools, High Performance Backend, and more. You can enable additional server-side components with one click without having to touch any configuration file manually. You can browse the full list of available components on the Nextcloud AIO GitHub page.
• Ready to take it one step further? There are unlimited opportunities to expand your functionality with more apps and features via community containers.
• You don’t need to jump between configs and separate containers to manage your instance. Everything is accessible from a single UI, from configuration to updates, logs, and service control.
• Updates and maintenance are automated for you, keeping your system always secure and stable. For example, this reduces manual patching and minimizes version compatibility issues.
• Nextcloud AIO provides easy remote backups via BorgBackup, which allows you to create and restore snapshots whenever you need it, in any location.

With our latest update, Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter, we worked on the usability of the Nextcloud AIO interface even further, making managing and configuring your platform easier. Let’s have a look at what’s new!

Nextcloud Podcast: Everything you want to know about Nextcloud AIO

How many AIOs are out there? When is it best for you, and when should you go for bare metal instead? Learn it all in the Nextcloud Podcast with Simon Lindner, the developer and main maintainer of Nextcloud AIO. Listen to the episode here.

Easier management for your instance: What’s new in Nextcloud AIO?

Nextcloud AIO uses containers to manage your apps and services, so our task is to deliver an interface that will make running your containers simpler and smoother. We worked on the Nextcloud AIO interface to further improve usability:

• Progress window for backend processes
• Improved log viewer
• Office suite switcher

Let’s have a look at each of them!

New progress window

The interface of Nextcloud AIO now shows what is happening in the backend when you start and stop the containers. This is especially helpful, for example, when the download of new container images is running slowly, and you would like to understand the reason.

Improved log viewer

We completely refactored the log viewer built into Nextcloud AIO that allows us to see what is happening inside the containers. You can open it by clicking on Running, Starting, or Stopped next to each container.

Before, you had to manually trigger a reload and get back to where you were in the list of data. Now, the viewer refreshes the data automatically and scrolls down to the latest item so that you can see in real time what is happening in the container. You can disable this automatic reloading via the button.

Office suite switcher

We added a new interface for the office options inside Nextcloud AIO settings. It lets you compare the available office suite options for your Nextcloud Hub, and easily see the advantages and disadvantages of each office solution on first glance.

Guides: How to install Nextcloud AIO

Are you new to Nextcloud? If you are ready to move away from Big Tech and start hosting your collaboration tools on your terms, a fairly easy way to get started is Nextcloud AIO.

Browse our guides for Windows and Linux for a step-by-step installation process.

Running Nextcloud for a big team? Consider Nextcloud AIO for enterprises

Nextcloud AIO is free and open source, ready for any scale of use. However, if you require additional stability and deployment confidence for larger teams (>100 users), we recommend Nextcloud Enterprise for All-in-One deployments.

With Nextcloud Enterprise, your organization keeps data under control and gets easy compliance in a pinch. It includes support SLA and direct access to our engineering team, security information, and all benefits that come with our enterprise product, like certified compliance and training.

The post Nextcloud AIO usability updates: Easy management of your apps and containers appeared first on Nextcloud.

We are also happy to welcome two new members to the coalition, and existing coalition members are hiring. Besides these formal contributions, significant community contributions have been received, especially in improving security and performance.

Here is an update on where things stand.

Euro-Office roadmap: Security, performance, and ODF support

Over the coming days, we plan to publish a roadmap on GitHub, so everyone can see where we are headed. While we collect existing tickets and create new things, we wanted to share an overview of our goals so the community has a clear picture of where Euro-Office is headed.

Already started & ongoing

When we started, our focus was on making Euro-Office easier to build, removing unneeded dependencies, replacing binary blobs, and so on. Much of this work is done, but there is still a fair bit to do:

• Improve the build process further
• Set up automated testing
• Translate code comments that aren’t in English
• Improve documentation
• Clean up and refactor code that has outdated dependencies or binary blobs

When we went live, a lot of the contributions had to do with performance or were related to security. These are, of course, important concerns, and we will keep working on them.

• Improve security: Various PR’s were done, including updates to an outdated OpenSSL and more
• Improve performance
• Bugfixes/improve stability
• Removal of some artificial restrictions, like limits to mobile editing and the admin panel

Next steps: improved ODF support, integrations, mobile apps, and more

While we work on all those very technical things, we also want to ship a product! Our goal is first to make a production-ready build of the server, clean up the code, and make integration with the various products like Nextcloud and OpenProject easier. Then we will work on the desktop and mobile apps.

• Make Euro-Office production-ready on the server (incl PDF editor)
• Improve ODF support
• Improve integration features: Allow skipping different cloud services, chat, and other unneeded features, and allow using a different AI back-end
• Improve Nextcloud integration: Build an easy Office selector, and integrate Smart Picker and other tools
• Release the desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Release Mobile apps for Android and iOS

One item we want to call out specifically: Euro-Office will work towards full ODF support. That is not only because it matters technically, but also reflects our priorities: a focus on open standards.

The Document Foundation put it well in a recent post on file format strategy:

Euro-Office exists precisely to give users and organisations a genuine alternative — one that treats open standards as a foundation, not a compatibility afterthought. Prioritizing improvements to ODF support is a natural expression of that commitment.

New members joining Euro-Office: OX and Office EU

Next, we are pleased to announce that two new organisations are joining the Euro-Office coalition: Open-Xchange and Office.EU. Both bring resources and commitment that will meaningfully accelerate the project, and of course, both are very much aligned with our mission.

Office EU

Office EU joined the Euro-Office open source project to strengthen a growing ecosystem of European platforms united by open collaboration. Open standards should be the norm, not the exception. When platforms work together on shared foundations, everyone benefits. A step forward in regaining control and building a free, transparent, and sovereign working environment for Europe.

Open-Xchange (OX)

Open-Xchange (OX) welcomes the Euro-Office initiative, as it believes it is essential that end-users have a choice of real alternatives to solutions from global hyperscalers that are truly independent and support the drive to digital sovereignty; This includes a secure and open office suite that can handle existing formats.

Next, let’s address the question of how you, too, can join the Euro-Office project.

Euro-Office: How to get involved and governance

A trustworthy open-source project needs clear rules on how newcomers can become part of the community and how decisions are made. We have taken concrete steps on both fronts.

Contributing to Euro-Office

We have introduced a CONTRIBUTE.md file covering everything a new contributor needs to know: design principles, coding guidelines, and how we handle pull requests. You should be able to get started there right away!

This process seems to be working even before we published this documentation. We are incredibly humbled by all the attention and the many contributions we have already seen.

Besides our team, a dozen external developers opened 15 pull requests across the repositories. A third of these have been merged, 1 was closed without a merge, while the rest are under review. Many relate to security and performance, bringing immediate benefits across the code base.

Apart from code contributions, over 120 people engaged in conversations, tested builds, reported issues, and contributed bug reports and feature requests. We welcome more contributions in any of those areas going forward!

For those looking for a more formal membership, the process of becoming a member has been defined in the README. It works as follows:

For individuals: Contribute over the course of a few months, and we will add you to the GitHub project. Sustained contribution is the bar; there is no formal application process.

For organisations: Reach out, tell us what you want to work on, and we will discuss and vote on your involvement following the governance process above. Once approved, your organisation joins the list of members, and your team members are added to the project.

Governance at Euro-Office

The README now includes a governance section, alongside a code of conduct based on the widely-adopted Contributor Covenant. For now, our current decision-making model is straightforward: we follow the open-source principle of who codes, decides with consensus-based decision-making in case of disagreement. Concretely:

• Decisions are made by consensus among all project members — meaning full agreement, or an agreed-to-disagree outcome.
• Members are the members of the GitHub project.
• Regular contributors are added to the project by consensus of existing members.
• These rules can be changed by a majority vote.

This is a starting point, not an endpoint. As we scale up, we will set up a more formal steering committee, and we will share more on that structure as it takes shape. But for now, these basic rules will suffice, as they do for many other open source projects.

Euro-Office is hiring!

Of course, there is a third way to get involved: join one of the teams at the various current contributors to Euro-Office!

In response to the immense interest from the market in Euro-Office, Nextcloud plans to double the team working on it. The same goes for IONOS, which has already shared details here. Please check our jobs page and submit your resume if you’re interested in working full-time at Euro-Office, and stay tuned for more messages about Euro-Office from IONOS on LinkedIn!

Of course, other partners are also ramping up their efforts, and we will keep you updated.

Join us

We now have a Euro-Office roadmap, a governance model, a contribution process, and a growing coalition with lots of open job positions. The foundations are solid. If your organisation shares our belief in digital sovereignty, open standards, and software that genuinely serves its users, now is a great time to get involved. Reach out, and let’s talk.

Euro-Office is gaining momentum with a clear roadmap focused on security, performance, and full ODF support. New coalition members, growing community contributions, and defined governance mark the next phase of building an open, sovereign office ecosystem.

The post Euro-Office: Building momentum appeared first on Nextcloud.

Before publishing any code, we conducted a thorough license review and consulted directly with people closely involved in writing the AGPLv3, who have since also spoken about Euro-Office in public. This article explains what we found, what we did, and why we are sure that Euro-Office is fully compliant with the terms of the AGPLv3.

Since publishing, our position was explicitly confirmed in a recent blog post about the Euro-Office license debate by the Free Software Foundation, the organization behind the GPL family of licenses. The original inventor of the AGPL, Bradley M. Kühn, similarly wrote a forceful case for our interpretation of the AGPL, and Dutch lawyer Maurits Westerik, known for the Dutch translation of the GPL series of licenses, came to the very same conclusion.

We are deeply humbled by the incredibly supportive response from the wider Free and Open Source Software community, and in particular we are grateful for the efforts of these very prominent members of our movement. Across forums, mailing lists and social media channels, thousands of other community members have voiced their support.

Summary

Euro-Office is built on ONLYOFFICE, which is distributed under the AGPLv3. The source files include additional terms added by ONLYOFFICE under Section 7 of that license — a mechanism that allows authors to attach a limited set of supplementary conditions.

We reviewed each of those terms carefully. One, a warranty disclaimer under Section 7(a), is entirely valid, and we have kept it. A second term, however, requires distributors to display the ONLYOFFICE product logo, while a third simultaneously declines to grant any trademark rights to that logo. This creates an impossible situation: you are required to include something you have no legal right to use. According to the Free Software Foundation, the author of the AGPLv3, a product logo does not qualify as a “reasonable legal notice or author attribution” under Section 7(b), and the combination with the trademark restriction makes this requirement a “further restriction” — which is explicitly prohibited by Section 10 of the license.

Fortunately, the license anticipates exactly this scenario. Section 7 states clearly that if a distributed work contains a further restriction, the recipient may remove that term. That is precisely what Euro-Office has done. The result is a codebase that is fully compliant with the AGPLv3, where all four user freedoms are preserved: to run, study, modify, and redistribute the software.

Read on to gain a deeper understanding of the AGPLv3 license and read a more detailed analysis of the additional terms ONLYOFFICE included.

Free and Open Source Software

Fundamentally, Open Source (or Free Software) changes the relation between the developer and the user (or customer) of a piece of software. Compared to traditional, ‘proprietary’ licenses, it shifts power from the copyright owner to users, granting them the right to exercise four essential freedoms (traditionally counted from 0 to 3):

0. To run the program for any purpose.
1. To study and change the program (requires source code).
2. To redistribute copies and help others.
3. To improve the program and release modified versions.

The licenses that underpin these freedoms are the General Public License, and its ‘networked’ sister, the GNU Affero General Public License. The fundamental goal of the licenses is to ensure that software can not be used to lock users in and limit their choices.

A level playing field

These licenses have allowed a thriving ecosystem to develop. They facilitate collaboration at an unprecedented scale, because it strikes a unique balance between leadership and contributors. As long as a project’s leadership, be it a single person like Linus Torvalds or a company like Sun Microsystems, acts in the interests of the users and contributors, the project can thrive. When the leader fails to do so, those users and contributors can choose to defect and simply create a new project in a process called ‘forking’. They are allowed to take a copy of the code and continue to collaborate on its development without any of the restrictions or even involvement of the original project.

Such a ‘fork’ can be more successful than the original, as Nextcloud has shown. Sometimes, after a fork, the community works it out, and the projects merge, as was seen when OpenWRT merged with its fork LEDE. Other forks disappear. Either way, forking is core to what open source stands for: freedom from vendor lock-in.

This freedom ensures that nobody can ‘kill’ a project with many users and contributors. Buy an open source company and shut it down – its users and contributors will simply proceed without you. But it also creates a discipline because leadership always knows that they owe their position to the trust they have with the community. Violate that trust, and they can be left with nothing.

The result is that open source licenses have created a unique collaborative space, a level playing field where developers can freely experiment and innovate and the best ideas win. Successful projects can build large and impactful products that are incredibly resilient and, through the transparent development and governance enabled by the licenses, can be afforded a extraordinary amount of trust by their users.

Detailed analysis of the license and terms

Let’s have a more detailed look at the terms included by ONLYOFFICE. We start by looking at the copyright notice in DocxRenderer.cpp. This same notice is included in all source files.

/*

* (c) Copyright Ascensio System SIA 2010-2023
* 
* This program is a free software product. You can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
* version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. In accordance with
* Section 7(a) of the GNU AGPL its Section 15 shall be amended to the effect
* that Ascensio System SIA expressly excludes the warranty of non-infringement
* of any third-party rights.
* 
* This program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
* warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR  PURPOSE. For
* details, see the GNU AGPL at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
* 
* You can contact Ascensio System SIA at 20A-6 Ernesta Birznieka-Upish
* street, Riga, Latvia, EU, LV-1050.
* 
* The  interactive user interfaces in modified source and object code versions
* of the Program must display Appropriate Legal Notices, as required under
* Section 5 of the GNU AGPL version 3.
* 
* Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original Product
* logo when distributing the program. Pursuant to Section 7(e) we decline to
* grant you any rights under trademark law for use of our trademarks.
* 
* All the Product's GUI elements, including illustrations and icon sets, as
* well as technical writing content are licensed under the terms of the
* Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. See the License
* terms at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode
* 

*/

The license is thus the AGPLV3, itself included verbatim with the code repository. The copyright notice proceeds to add a number of terms, referring to the rules as set out in the AGPLv3 Section 7.

A look at Section 7

Let’s have a closer look at this section of the AGPL. Section 7 of the license scopes clearly which terms can be added without contradicting the terms of the license (under Section 10):

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you
add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of
that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:


a) Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the
terms of sections 15 and 16 of this License; or

b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or
author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal
Notices displayed by works containing it; or

c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or
requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in
reasonable ways as different from the original version; or

d) Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or
authors of the material; or

e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some
trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or

f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that
material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of
it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for
any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on
those licensors and authors.

When a term is added that does not fit the scope of a through f, this is considered a “further restriction”. These may be removed, as Section 7 continues:

All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further
restrictions" within the meaning of section 10.  If the Program as you
received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
governed by this License along with a term that is a further
restriction, you may remove that term.  If a license document contains
a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this
License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms
of that license document, provided that the further restriction does
not survive such relicensing or conveying.

It refers to Section 10 which states you are not allowed to distribute AGPLv3 licensed software with “further restrictions” to the rights otherwise granted by the license:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License.  For example, you may
not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of
rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation
(including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that
any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for
sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.

In short, section 7 allows the addition of terms, as long as the fundamental rights of the end user to run, study, modify and share the code are not limited. If such a restrictive term is added, the recipient of the code is allowed to remove it.

This was explicitly written to deal with “gotcha” licenses that took an open source license and added a clause undermining the freedoms the GPL grants, as can be read in this blog from the Software Freedom Conservancy’s Bradley M. Kühn, the original inventor of the AGPLv3:

Specifically, the clause was designed to give more rights to downstream recipients when bad actors attempt this nasty trick. Indeed, I recall from my direct participation in the A/GPLv3 drafting that this provision was specifically designed for the situation where the original, sole copyright holder/licensor added additional restrictions.

He also quotes Richard Fontana, legal council of the FSF at the time of the license being written:

The whole point of the section 7 clause (“If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.”) was to address the well known problem of an original GPL licensor tacking on non-GPL, non-FOSS, GPL-norm-violating restrictions.

The specific terms added

Let’s closely examine the terms added by ONLYOFFICE, which relies on sections 7(a), 7(b) and 7(e).

Clearly, a disclaimer of warranty as described under Section 7(a) is included. This has been retained and can be found in the latest version of the license.

Next comes a term under 7(b). In the license, this section outlines the ‘Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it’. Satisfying the condition generally means having an ‘about’ dialog which would credit the author, for example:

Portions of this software are © 2024 Example Corp.

Attribution Notice:
This product includes the “ExampleDB Engine” developed by Example Corp.
(https://example.com). This notice must be displayed in all user interfaces
that present legal notices or credits.

Such a requirement is reasonable: it does not put an undue burden on the recipient, limiting their freedom to use, study, modify or distribute.

However, the logo requirement added by ONLYOFFICE does not fit within the well defined scope of the terms under Section 7(b):

* Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original Product
* logo when distributing the program. Pursuant to Section 7(e) we decline to
* grant you any rights under trademark law for use of our trademarks.

This is a rather contradictory requirement. It requires including the product logo, which is trademarked by ONLYOFFICE, while explicitly not granting any rights to use the ONLYOFFICE trademark. Or, to put it differently:

• you MUST include the product logo
• you do NOT get permission to use the logo in any way

Of course, it is impossible to abide by these conflicting requirements. Thus shipping the code like this would violate the terms of the AGPLv3 in Section 10:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights
granted or affirmed under this License.

This is also the view of the license author, the Free Software Foundation:

The GNU GPLv3 Sec. 7(b) does make it possible to extend the requirement, but only to cover items that can be deemed as “reasonable legal notices or author attributions.” The terms “legal notice” and “author attribution” cannot be stretched to cover completely different items. “Legal notice” normally means a notice advising a person of their rights or obligations. “Author attribution” is an identification of the natural person who is the author of the copyrighted work. This means that, for example, links leading to different materials are not intended to benefit from Sec. 7(b). Apart from some specific situations, logos are neither “legal notices” nor “author attributions” as normally understood.

Earlier this week, this position was explicitly confirmed by the FSF in a blog about the case with ONLYOFFICE:

This obligation to “retain the original Product logo” is not included in Sec. 7(b) of the (A)GPLv3, nor in any other parts, as an (A)GPL-compliant additional term, and is therefore considered a further restriction of the (A)GPLv3.

From their side, ONLYOFFICE has acknowledged the tension between brand protection and open-source freedoms in a discussion with isitreallyfoss.com. There they clearly stated their wish to “remain committed to open-source principles while also ensuring that our brand identity is protected and that users receive a clear and consistent experience”.

Clearly, ONLYOFFICE aims to avoid confusion about the origin of its software. The display of a notice to that end in the “About” dialog, as Section 7(b) was designed to allow, should satisfy that requirement. However, including a trademarked logo in the interface would limit what recipients can do with the software. This might of course be intended, to avoid harm to the brand of the creator of the software. If that is the goal, the FSF recommends to just use Section 7(e) when including a logo in the terms:

The GNU GPLv3 Sec. 7(e) should rather be used if a licensor’s goal is to preserve — to some extent — links or logos in the program’s interface. This section acknowledges that the licensor can decline,

“to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks.”

Putting trademarked links or logos in the program’s interface and explicitly declining a trademark license thus gives the trademark holder a way to stop uses harmful to their reputation, balanced by the users’ option to remove the trademarks in order to distribute modifications freely. That way of securing attribution (or even advertising) benefit is consistent with the GNU GPLv3’s intent to protect software freedom. People who modify the software still have some flexibility to decide how notices included in ALNs are displayed in their software, and other developers cannot use Sec. 7 to try to take that flexibility away.

To balance the rights of the user with those of the author, section 7 gives the users the “option to remove the trademarks in order to distribute modifications freely.” Quoting this specific section from the license:

If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice
stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a
further restriction, you may remove that term.

In conclusion, to achieve compliance with Section 10 of the AGPLv3, Section 7 of the AGPLv3 allows the conflicting logo requirement to be removed.

This is what Euro-Office opted to do. You can read this reasoning in the commit that executed the change reproduced below where we also address the last section of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license mentioned for GUI assets like icons and illustrations. This Creative Commons license is well known and respected, and we do not see it pose any issues for Euro-Office.

Commit message:

Logo retention requirement (Section 7(b)):
Section 7(b) permits requiring preservation of "legal notices or
author attributions". A product logo is a trademark/brand element,
not a legal notice or author attribution. It therefore exceeds the
scope of 7(b), qualifies as a "further restriction" under Section 10,
and may be removed.

Trademark disclaimer (Section 7(e)):
Purely declaratory — the AGPLv3 does not grant trademark rights in
any case. The disclaimer creates no affirmative obligation on the
licensee and removing it changes no rights or obligations. There is
no legal basis requiring its preservation.

Contact address:
The postal address of Ascensio System SIA is informational only.
No provision of the AGPLv3 requires downstream recipients to preserve
the original licensor's contact details.

Appropriate Legal Notices reminder:
This paragraph merely restates the obligation already imposed by
AGPLv3 Section 5(d). It is not a Section 7 additional term and its
removal does not affect compliance obligations, which derive from
the license text itself.

The Section 7(a) warranty exclusion and CC BY-SA 4.0 notice for GUI
assets are retained as they are substantive terms that modify licensee
rights and obligations.

To paint the actions we took into a picture:

Conclusion

The AGPLv3 was written to protect the freedom of software users and to ensure that freedom cannot be quietly taken away through the back door of additional terms. Section 10 is explicit: no distributor may impose further restrictions on the rights the license grants. Section 7 provides both the scope of what can be added, and the remedy when something goes beyond that scope.

In this case, the remedy is clear and mandatory. The logo retention clause — which requires including a trademarked logo while simultaneously withholding permission to use that trademark — qualifies as a further restriction under Section 10. Distributing Euro-Office with that clause intact would therefore put us in violation of the AGPLv3. Removing it, as per Section 7, is required for compliance with the license, and required to preserve the full rights of every recipient of Euro-Office to run, study, modify, and redistribute the software.

We will credit Ascensio System SIA and all other contributors prominently in the appropriate places, including the “About” dialog, which is both the right thing to do and consistent with what Section 7(b) was designed to allow. We remain open to dialogue about how to do so in a way that works for everyone. But the foundation of that dialogue must be the AGPLv3 as written, and the freedoms it was created to protect.

The post Euro-Office: License compliance and what open source means appeared first on Nextcloud.

The book aligns with the evolution of conversation that has happened since the previous two enterprise days. Few discussed whether sovereign solutions are viable or which solution to pick. Instead, the conversation has moved to procurement, migration strategies, and roll-out.

In the Netherlands, that shift is especially visible in education and municipalities. Several initiatives presented at the event are piloting Nextcloud or are already moving into deployment.

Dutch initiatives that are choosing digital sovereignty

Cloudwise: Nextcloud in elementary and middle schools

One example is Cloudwise, which offers smart solutions for technical and educational challenges, enabling more than 4,500 elementary and middle schools to work seamlessly in the cloud. At Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Utrecht, Nextcloud and Cloudwise announced a partnership to make a future-proof, European-based cloud alternative available to the education sector, based on Nextcloud technology and Cloudwise’s educational expertise and platforms.

SIVON: Nextcloud in schools

More and more schools want to be less dependent on Big Tech companies and keep more control over their digital future, according to SIVON, the ICT cooperative for 476 school boards across the Netherlands. Tomas Harreveld (Advisor, OSPO and Digital Autonomy at SIVON) presented how to gain more digital sovereignty in primary and secondary education.

MBO: Nextcloud in vocational training

Building on that, a pilot with secondary vocational education institutions (Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs, MBO) was announced. Now, 15 organizations participate, and the team announced that an extension to about 50 organizations is involved. The setup follows the same approach: start with specific workloads and expand from there. But attendance at the event was also described by the team as a search for input, feedback, and options for the MBO sector.

As Rob Vos, Digitalization Strategist at MBO Digitaal, put it:

We have a dream, and all change starts there. So we got started, rather than wait and watch. We start small, an approach that fits the MBO well — but once things are moving, they won’t stop.

Rob Vos

Digitalization Strategist at MBO Digitaal

SURF: Scaling Nextcloud for universities

The IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions SURF announced to offer members an additional opportunity to join the Nextcloud pilot due to high demand. SURF already operates the Nextcloud-based SURF Drive for 80,000 users but is looking to expand functionality to a complete, sovereign digital workplace. Hans Louwhoff, SURF board member: “We are taking an important step towards greater digital autonomy for our members. The high level of interest shows that this is a live issue. That is why it makes sense to give more institutions the opportunity to participate.”

Technische Universität Berlin (Technical University Berlin) is already a long-standing Nextcloud user. Thomas Hildmann, Deputy Head of ZECM (Center for Campus Management), provided a detailed overview of the implementation and configuration of Nextcloud for tens of thousands of users at the university.

Strive for digital sovereignty also in the public sector

But the strive for digital sovereignty is not limited to education. A similar development is also taking place in the public sector.

Jacco Brouwer from the coalition of Dutch municipalities (VNG) and Erik Dolle, CIO at the city of Ede, spoke about the wide range of Nextcloud pilots and proof of concepts happening across Dutch municipalities. Cities are serious about creating autonomy, recognizing the risks that come with dependence on big foreign tech vendors.

Together with partners, experts from the Municipalities of Baarn and Amsterdam provided insights into getting started with digital autonomy and Nextcloud as the foundation for municipal services.

Elen Mol presented the vision and current state of sovereignty efforts at the city of Amsterdam. Cooperating with the G4, the larger 4 cities in the Netherlands there is a Nextcloud Hub pilot in progress after a proof of concept test comparing some rivals showed Nextcloud was the most mature solution. The city aims to have its full infrastructure sovereign by 2030.

Looking across borders: digital sovereignty in Austria and France

System integrator Atos and Microsoft integration specialist Sendent presented how the Austrian Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism (BMWET) transformed a Microsoft-only workspace into a hybrid Nextcloud environment. The ministry rolled out Nextcloud for 1,200 employees in just four months from proof of concept to go-live and now benefits from secure, flexible collaboration under full data control.

Atos, which was present at the event with a significant team, is active across the Dutch federal government in projects to replicate the success in Austria.

Isabelle Blanc of the French Ministry for the Ecological Transition provided insights into how the ministry integrated Nextcloud and Collabora into their sovereign collaboration suite BNUM for 50,000 users. The ministry emphasized how the organization benefits from interoperability, security, collaboration, and sovereignty through open source solutions.

Nextcloud’s growing partner ecosystem

To make the high-performance, sovereign open-source platform more widely available for organizations, IT services provider Centric announced a partnership with Nextcloud to offer a common sovereign workspace solution for the public sector in the Netherlands.

Centric will fully manage Nextcloud workspaces, ensuring the highest performance and security standards and giving clients maximum control over where their data is stored. This will be particularly beneficial for the federal government, municipalities, decentralised governments, and other organizations operating within or on behalf of the public sector.

In the words of Maarten Hillenaar, Director Corporate Development at Centric:

From our many conversations with people from public organizations, we have learned that they are facing challenges regarding data access, security, legislation, vendor dependency, and transparency. Therefore, we are happy to expand our sovereign portfolio to include a sovereign workspace solution based on Nextcloud.

Maarten Hillenaar

Director Corporate Development at Centric

The leading telecommunications and IT service provider in the Netherlands, KPN, presented its sovereign cloud working environment for Dutch organizations and its sovereign-by-design framework. The solution is hosted and managed entirely in the Netherlands in KPN’s data centers. This gives organizations more control over their data, ensures they comply with European laws and regulations, and makes them less dependent on international developments or parties.

Dutch Nextcloud partner Sendent also announced Sendent M365 Office Online integration, which integrates Microsoft 365 Office Online with Nextcloud to enable a gradual shift toward digital autonomy. Microsoft is retiring Office Online Server (on-prem) this year, which forces organizations to either move fully into Microsoft 365 in the cloud or lose browser-based editing. With the integration, users can open and edit files in Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) but stored in Nextcloud, in the browser, without downloads or workflow changes.

Insights from experts: integration solutions and a book reading with a cat-filled presentation

Additional sessions included a wide range of integration solutions around sovereign workspaces. Speakers included the expert in email, groupware, and storage migration audriga, project management software provider OpenProject, wiki software platform XWiki, the provider of online collaborative document editing, Collabora Online, IT service provider Bechtle, and digital security company ESET.

One of the highlights for many attendees: Brenno de Winter did a reading from his recently published book on digital sovereignty: “Sovereignty! But how?”

It was a different format compared to the rest of the sessions. While most talks focused on implementations and projects, this shifted the perspective towards how public sector organizations deal with dependency and long-term decisions.

In a cat-loaded presentation, Brenno went over the history of sovereignty, touching on the 30-year war and the enlightenment, and the shifting positions of state, church, and, of course, the emergence of the democratic mandate. Now, modern technology and the emergence of corporations have changed the traditional picture of a ‘trias politica’ of legislative, judicial, and executive branches.

While the fourth estate, supposed to hold power to account, is getting undermined, big corporations seem poised to take a fourth position. He went over recent data security and privacy events, from Snowden to GDPR, ending with the current situation. Brenno summarized the essence of the book: what to do.

Written for decision-makers, the book offers an analysis with actionable insights, checklists, and is based on existing frameworks.

What’s next for digital sovereignty in the Netherlands and beyond

The Netherlands is clearly gaining momentum in this space, with concrete projects underway across education, the public sector, and service providers. Many of these efforts are still in early stages, but they are moving forward in parallel and starting to attract broader attention.

We’ll be back soon! And we are curious to see these initiatives develop over the coming months.

If you are interested in further developments, join us at the upcoming customer event, Nextcloud Enterprise Day Bern in Switzerland, or our flagship event, the Nextcloud Summit, on June 9 in Munich. See you there?

The post Dutch education system and municipalities strive for digital sovereignty appeared first on Nextcloud.

The problem with Big Tech AI platforms, as well as the challenges of open source AI technologies

The development of AI is moving fast, and many of the new capabilities face ethical and even legal challenges. As we explored in our article on Big Tech AI privacy concerns, many of these tools rely on large-scale data collection, often without clear transparency or user control.

This can lead to issues with:

• Use of data without permission
• Discrimination and biases
• Data theft and leakage

What’s more, the mere use of open source code is no longer enough to be able to say you are in control over your data or that the software is safe or ethical.

This is particularly true for neural network-based AI technologies.

The set of data and the software used in the training, as well as the availability of the final model, are all factors that determine the amount of freedom and control a user has.

Your guide to privacy-first AI: Nextcloud’s Ethical AI Rating

Not all AI models are equal, because some prioritize openness and user control, while others rely on opaque models and centralized data processing.

To help users and administrators make informed decisions, we developed the Nextcloud Ethical AI Rating: a rating system designed to give a quick insight into the ethical implications of a particular integration of AI in Nextcloud.

This rating aims to provide a quick, transparent review of how much control and insight you have over these tools.

This is especially important as organizations evaluate AI tools not just for performance, but for compliance, privacy, and long-term data sovereignty.

Users can still evaluate solutions in more detail, but the Nextcloud Ethical AI rating can simplify the choice for the majority of users and customers.

The Nextcloud Ethical AI rating in practice: What you need to know

This leads us to the following ranking system:

• If all of these conditions are met, we give the AI solution a green label
• If one condition is met, it receives an orange label
• If two conditions are met, the label is yellow
• If none of the conditions are met, it gets a red label

In other words, if you have full control over the AI tool you’re using, you’ll see a green label. If you have no control and a lot of dependency, the label will be red.

These colors give an immediate overview of the AI solution for factors such as sovereignty, transparency, and data control.

Caveat: Why critical thinking is still important to ensure ethical AI

We add one additional note to the rating: bias.

Bias remains a known challenge in AI systems. While it is difficult to guarantee complete neutrality, the rating highlights known issues where they exist, helping users make informed decisions.

So when we discover major biases in the data set or in the expression of the model at the time of our last check, you will see this mentioned in the rating. This includes discrimination on the basis of race or gender for a face recognition technology, for example.

There are other ethical considerations for AI, of course.

Think of legal challenges related to the use of datasets, in particular copyright issues, as well as the significant energy consumption of deep neural networks, which is of great concern.

Unfortunately, those concerns are extremely hard to quantify in an objective manner, and while we intend to try to warn users of any open issues, we can not (yet) include them in our rating.

For that reason, we recommend users to investigate for themselves what the consequences of the use of AI are for their individual case using the Nextcloud Ethical AI Rating.

Ethical AI in Nextcloud Assistant

Of course, we try to practice what we preach: this approach is not just theoretical, but also shapes how AI is implemented in Nextcloud.

At the core of Nextcloud’s AI approach is the principle that it should never be locked into any single provider. In other words, the administrators can choose between different providers, including self-hosted options.

What’s more, organizations can decide where their models run, which models are used, and what happens to their data.

By doing so, your organization can benefit from AI-supported collaboration without giving up responsibility for its data and stay in control.

Our latest release of Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter continues to build on this foundation.

AI is still optional and configurable, instead of a mandatory layer imposed on all users or workflows. This allows organizations to adopt AI at their own pace, align it with internal policies, and decide which use cases make sense in their environment.

When AI is enabled, it becomes part of the collaboration environment instead of an external dependency. It integrates into existing workflows without breaking governance or compliance frameworks.

What can the Nextcloud Assistant do for you in practice?

• Improve and generate texts, media, and documents
• Answer questions based on organizational data
• Summarize meetings and conversations in Nextcloud Talk
• Provide live transcription and translation for multilingual collaboration
• Integrate AI capabilities directly into email, chat, meetings, and file workflows

Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter also makes compliance easier: You can generate images and documents in various apps and automatically label content with watermarks. This ensures your organization is in line with the latest regulations, such as the EU AI Act.

In short: privacy-first AI solutions such as the Nextcloud Assistant give organizations the efficiency and convenience of AI, while keeping governance, compliance, and data ownership exactly where they belong: under their control.

The post Nextcloud Ethical AI rating: A transparent approach to privacy-first AI appeared first on Nextcloud.

To explore what that means in practice, we spoke with Professor Dennis-Kenji Kipker ahead of the Nextcloud Summit 2026 in Munich, Germany, on June 9.

Working at the intersection of law and technology, he advises governments and institutions on cybersecurity, global regulation, and digital resilience, from Europe to the U.S. and China.

Discover why he thinks sovereignty starts with procurement, where Europe still falls short, and what it will take to turn ambition into reality.

1. How do you define digital sovereignty, and how do you apply it in your daily life? 

Digital sovereignty is, first and foremost, a procurement question, not a definitional one. No amount of conceptual debate makes us more digitally sovereign in practice.

Both consumers and organizations need to understand that political declarations alone do not produce sovereignty. Every single procurement decision is a vote for or against greater digital independence.

Digital sovereignty is not something that can be distributed by decree across a country like water from a watering can in the form of political decisions. It materializes through concrete choices.

That is precisely why I believe the state has a co-responsibility to make digitally sovereign solutions accessible to everyone, not just to large institutions with dedicated IT departments.

In my own life, I try to use sovereign tools and solutions wherever it is feasible. And frankly, in the personal sphere, that turns out to be considerably easier than most people initially assume.

Every procurement decision is a vote for or against digital independence.

Prof. Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker

Speaker at the Nextcloud Summit 2026

2. Your work sits at the intersection of law and technology. Those two fields often operate very differently. Especially in areas like cybersecurity and AI, that gap can be challenging. How do you bring them together?

Law and technology may operate on different timescales and speak different languages, but they are ultimately both systems for governing behavior and managing risk, which makes their intersection unavoidable rather than optional.

In cybersecurity and AI, the connection becomes particularly visible when we ask who bears responsibility when systems fail, who sets the standards by which “secure” or “trustworthy” is defined, and who has the authority to enforce those standards.

Technology creates facts on the ground. Law defines what those facts mean and what consequences follow. The challenge is not that the two fields are incompatible.

Technology creates facts on the ground. Law defines what those facts mean.

Prof. Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker

Speaker at the Nextcloud Summit 2026

It is that law has traditionally been reactive, codifying norms after society has already absorbed the impact of a technology, whereas effective cybersecurity and AI governance demands a more anticipatory approach.

Bridging the two requires legal scholars who are technically literate enough to understand what they are regulating, and technologists who appreciate that design choices are never value-neutral but are always already embedded in a normative framework.

3. And how do you see the role of the government in leveling the playing field for the digital market in Europe?

The government has several distinct levers here, and the key is using all of them coherently rather than in isolation. Competition law must be enforced with genuine ambition; breaking up or constraining the market power of digital monopolies is a precondition for any meaningful level playing field.

At the same time, targeted support for European start-ups and scale-ups is essential, because a healthy competitive ecosystem cannot emerge if promising companies are either acquired by incumbents before they mature or simply leave for more favorable jurisdictions.

Perhaps most underappreciated, however, is the role of public procurement: governments are among the largest buyers of digital products and services in Europe, and systematically making alternative, sovereign solutions accessible through procurement frameworks would both create demand and send a clear market signal.

These three approaches, competition enforcement, innovation support, and procurement reform, need to work in concert if Europe is to move from a position of digital dependence to one of genuine strategic agency.

4. As an advisor to the German Federal Government and the European Commission, what main challenge(s) do you see remaining in the EU to achieve digital sovereignty?

The most persistent challenge is the gap between regulatory ambition and operational reality. The EU has produced genuinely significant legislation. This includes the GDPR, the NIS2 Directive, the AI Act, and the Cyber Resilience Act. But the effectiveness of that legislative architecture depends on consistent, well-resourced enforcement across 27 member states with very different administrative capacities and political appetites.

A regulation that is enforced vigorously in one member state but largely ignored in another does not create a level playing field; it creates regulatory arbitrage. Beyond enforcement, there is also the structural challenge that European digital infrastructure remains deeply dependent on a small number of non-European providers for cloud, semiconductors, and foundational AI models.

Changing that dependency requires not only investment but a willingness to accept a degree of short-term friction. Think of slower procurement, higher initial costs, and more complex vendor management. But in exchange, you get long-term strategic resilience. Communicating that trade-off honestly to policymakers and the public remains genuinely difficult.

The real challenge is the gap between regulatory ambition and operational reality.

Prof. Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker

Speaker at the Nextcloud Summit 2026

5. The CII also focuses on supporting young people and promising cyber start-ups. What advice would you give to them with regard to digital sovereignty?

My core advice is to treat digital sovereignty not as a compliance burden or a marketing label, but as a genuine design principle from day one.

For young founders and developers, the decisions made in the earliest stages of a product — which cloud provider to use, which data model to adopt, which jurisdictions to build for — have compounding consequences that become very costly to reverse later.

Building with sovereignty in mind from the start is dramatically easier than retrofitting it after growth has locked you into dependencies. Beyond the technical dimension, I would encourage young people in this space to engage seriously with the policy and regulatory environment rather than treating it as an external constraint.

The rules being written right now on AI, cybersecurity, or data markets will shape the competitive landscape for the next decade, and those who understand them deeply will have a significant advantage over those who merely react to them.

Sovereignty, in the end, is also about knowing the rules of the field you are playing on.

6. What do you expect from the Nextcloud Summit?

I come to the Nextcloud Summit with a specific interest in where the community stands on translating the concept of digital sovereignty from a principled commitment into scalable, enterprise-ready practice.

The Nextcloud Summit is one credible proof point to show that open, sovereign infrastructure can compete on functionality, but the gap between what is technically possible and what actually gets deployed in governments, hospitals, and mid-sized companies remains significant.

I am hoping for honest conversations about that last mile: the procurement barriers, the interoperability challenges, and the organizational inertia that still prevent sovereign solutions from reaching their full potential adoption.

More broadly, I see events like this as important nodes in the ecosystem where policy people, technologists, and practitioners can stress-test each other’s assumptions. And that kind of productive friction is exactly what the field needs right now.

The post Digital sovereignty starts with procurement: Interview with Prof. Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker appeared first on Nextcloud.

How to safely transfer files with File Drop

Getting started with File Drop is easy. In three simple steps, you can start uploading and sharing files securely and quickly.

1. Click “+New” and select “Create file request”.

2. Add the file information, including what you are requesting, where the files should go, and possible notes. You can add links, a date, or any other information that will help the recipient understand what you are requesting. Click “Continue”.

3. Set additional information if needed, such as an expiration date for the submission or a password. Click “Continue”.

You are now ready to securely share files. Simply copy-paste the share link or send the link via email to your contacts, so they can start uploading their files.

Secure file uploading and sharing for your enterprise

Your client will then be able to upload files to your server in a secure and easy manner. When the client uploads a file, you will receive a notification of new files in your upload folder and proceed to process the data. At the end, you provide the result in a separate folder for your client to download securely. At all times, your data and your client’s data are protected by industry-leading security measures!

Easy and personal

Send files and folders with just a few clicks to one or multiple customers. Create personal links for them to upload data to you.

Ultimate security

Files are securely transferred and stored on your own infrastructure, without any third party ever gaining access.

IT stays in control

The IT department enforces rules and limitations on password & expiration dates, access by IP, file type or size and more.

Your files under your control thanks to advanced features

The system administrator can rest assured that all interactions follow the rules and requirements set by the company with regard to passwords, expiration dates, and the limitations enforced by the Nextcloud File Access Control feature.

Data remains, at all times, on-premise, under full authority of IT. File Drop supports a wide range of storage technologies, including NFS, SMB, Windows Network Drive, SharePoint, Object Storage, and many more.

Create unique links for each customer

Rather than creating a random upload link, you can also have customized links by entering a customer’s email address and then enabling the File Drop function (upload only). Your client will receive an email with instructions on where to securely upload their files and, if you choose to add one, the password in a separate email.

You can have both a shared link and multiple, unique email links that each come with their own password, expiration date, and access rights. The password email can be disabled in the admin sharing settings for even more security-sensitive data, where a secure second channel (like a secure video call) has to be used for the password.

Request encrypted files with File Drop

The File Drop feature includes the option to upload files to end-to-end encrypted folders. You can request confidential files from external people without worrying about security, simply and without fuss. And you don’t even need to share additional passwords.

With the release of Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter, you can create encrypted File Drop links both via desktop and in the browser.

The post Nextcloud File Drop: convenient and secure file uploading and sharing for Enterprises appeared first on Nextcloud.

About the updates

Earlier, we had to stop the updates to versions 32.0.7 and 33.0.1. due to a regression in the sharing sidebar. Below you can find the information on the follow-up versions.

The maintenance updates include a number of important bug fixes and improvements in all supported Nextcloud Hub versions. You can find the full changelog on our website.

Found an issue? Please report any issues you find in our GitHub repositories.

Updates are available for:

• Nextcloud Hub 25 Autumn (version 32.0.8)
• Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter (version 33.0.2)

Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter for Nextcoud Enterprise deployments

We are making Nextcloud Hub 26 winter available to the Nextcloud Enterprise customers. It begins with 30% roll-out, and will become gradually available on all instances over the next weeks. 

Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter: Reclaim your digital autonomy

What’s new in Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter:

• Growing sovereignty: new federation features, improved data export and import
• Nextcloud Talk: live translations, pinned messages, scheduling
• Office document comparison
• Whiteboard: comments, reactions, timers
• Nextcloud Assistant performance upgrade and AI labeling
• Powerful E2EE in the web interface
• Speed-up with ADA engine … and many more improvements in all apps!

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 New maintenance releases: Nextcloud Hub 25 Autumn & 26 Winter appeared first on Nextcloud.

With our first Austrian Nextcloud Enterprise Day, we aimed for 100 participants. In the end, nearly 300 people registered from across Austria’s public sector, academia, and enterprise community, requiring some last-minute adjustments to the venue.

Was it worth it? Definitely.

Especially because one thing became clear: from government institutions to research organisations and private companies, there is a growing urgency to regain control over data, infrastructure, and digital collaboration. And Austria is not just part of this shift. It is actively shaping it with great lighthouse projects, as part of a movement of millions of new enterprise users that moved to a sovereign, Nextcloud-based workspace across Europe last year.

High demand for secure data handling in the Austrian public sector

The Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMWET) is such a leading example of digital sovereignty. On stage, Florian Zinnagl, CIO of the ministry, walked participants through the migration of 1200 users in just a few months from Microsoft to Nextcloud.

The success was made possible thanks to close collaboration with Nextcloud, Nextcloud partner Sendent, and help from Atos, the IT service provider for BMWET. The Microsoft integrations from Sendent allowed users to keep familiar workflows while moving sensitive data and collaboration to a sovereign platform.

The result was a transition that did not interrupt day-to-day work, but still significantly reduced dependency on external cloud providers.

At the same time, institutions such as TU Wien are contributing through research and by building and testing open digital infrastructure. Jan Vales, System Administrator for the TUcloud, presented their sovereign file sharing system on stage, emphasizing the great responsibility involved in processing student data.

He wants to encourage people and organizations to step out of their comfort zone:

With Nextcloud, we were able to solve many problems in our collaboration, especially when it comes to working together with external people or when it comes to mobile work. To everyone who is considering choosing a sovereign solution like Nextcloud, I’d clearly say: just set it up. It works.

Jan Vales

System Administrator for the TUcloud at TU Wien

Also at the University of Innsbruck, Nextcloud is used as a central platform for collaboration. It brings together file storage, communication, and project organization in one place, so teams can work on documents, coordinate tasks, and manage schedules within a shared environment. Tools like chat and video calls are integrated, as well as structured workspaces for different groups and projects.

The platform is operated on-premises by the university’s IT services. All data remains on servers within the university network in Innsbruck and is handled according to internal data protection policies. This gives the university full control over how sensitive information is stored, accessed, and shared.

This approach reflects a broader shift, particularly in the education sector, where questions of data protection and control are becoming central to IT decisions.

Michael Redinger, Head of the central IT service at the university, described how this change has become visible over the past year:

The shift in public discourse in Austria has only really been noticeable for the past year: Now, finally, people are talking about digital sovereignty – it is the main driver of current developments. This pleases us and confirms that we are on the right path.

Michael Redinger

Head of the central IT service at the University of Innsbruck

The discussions at the Enterprise Day in Vienna showed how differently organizations are approaching the same challenge. While some are already running sovereign infrastructure in production, others are still evaluating how to reduce dependencies without disrupting existing systems.

What they have in common is a growing focus on control, not just over data, but over the way digital workplaces are structured and operated. This was reflected in many of the conversations throughout the day, which often moved quickly from technical questions to organizational and strategic considerations.

This broader perspective also shaped the final panel discussion. Alongside practical implementation experiences, the conversation turned to economic aspects: the cost of dependency, the long-term impact of vendor lock-in, and the question of how to build sustainable alternatives.

Wenzel Mehnert, Jakob Steinschaden, Peter Garlock, and Paul Zwiefelhofer discussed how digital sovereignty is not just a technical issue, but increasingly a matter of economic and strategic importance.

Austria’s institutions are part of a broader European movement

2025 was a strong year for sovereign solutions. Across sectors, organizations are moving away from vendor lock-in and towards systems they can control and adapt.

Over the past year, more than two million new professional users joined Nextcloud. Adoption grew across public administration, education, and private companies, with bookings at Nextcloud once again increasing by more than 50 percent compared to the previous year.

Demand is particularly high in countries such as Germany, France, and the United States, but growth is also accelerating in places like the Netherlands, Brazil, and Denmark. Austria clearly fits into this picture. The same questions are being asked, and similar decisions are being made.

At the same time, the conversations in Vienna showed that there is a strong and growing interest in moving these discussions forward locally. The exchange throughout the day was open, practical, and focused on real challenges.

We are looking forward to continuing this conversation and meeting again in beautiful Vienna soon!

Until then, at the Nextcloud Summit in Munich on June 9, we will bring together people from policy, academia, and the industry to discuss these topics even more.

The post Digital sovereignty gains momentum in Austria appeared first on Nextcloud.

But they might no longer be the ideal solution for your organization. Geopolitical tensions, concerns over data sovereignty, and rising subscription costs: These are just some of the reasons why organizations want to switch to secure, on-premises solutions.

However, while the motivations are clear, there might be hesitation. After all, change can come with disruption and user resistance.

So what if we told you that you don’t have to choose?

With Nextcloud’s integrations, you can maintain the familiar interfaces from Microsoft while regaining data control. The solution lies in the strategic integration of your current collaboration apps within your Nextcloud platform, thanks to our partner Sendent.

In other words: You can keep your current Microsoft “look and feel” while enjoying the benefits of an on-premises collaboration solution.

Is it time to make the move? Why organizations prefer on-premises collaboration tools

When connecting with new and existing clients at events, such as the Nextcloud Enterprise Days or the Nextcloud Summit, we often hear the same concerns.

Organizations are looking for Microsoft alternatives, driven by motivations such as:

• Compliance: GDPR, HIPAA, and industry-specific requirements create challenges with third-party cloud storage
• Data sovereignty: Complete control over where data lives and who can access it
• Cost predictability: No more unpredictable licensing increases and per-user fees
• Security control: Data lives on your infrastructure and under your security rules, following your audit trails
• Vendor independence: Freedom from lock-in and ability to customize your environment

Clients, however, can also worry about the trade-offs of moving away from Microsoft’s ecosystem. They might mention productivity disruption, complexity of migration, and user adoption.

At Nextcloud, we have a wide experience in guaranteeing a smooth transition.

If you prefer a hybrid approach, Nextcloud offers a third path: preserving familiar Microsoft tools while achieving true data sovereignty through strategic integration.

The benefits of a hybrid approach: Microsoft-Nextcloud integration

An integration setup entails keeping your current Microsoft tools while connecting them to your on-premises Nextcloud infrastructure.

This approach offers short-term and long-term advantages to your operations.

The immediate effects include regaining data control and reducing compliance risks by choosing on-premises collaboration tools. On top of that, you enjoy lower cloud storage costs and enhanced security with E2EE file sharing.

In the long term, you have the benefit of accessing a scalable solution for future open source transition, as well as reduced vendor dependency, and compliance readiness (even when regulations evolve).

A hybrid migration with a phased approach also offers the risk mitigation that a lot of organizations are looking for.

You can maintain business continuity with minimal downtime, isolating potential issues from the start. Your employees, in the meantime, can adjust to and build confidence with the new approach, including giving real-time feedback.

Six ways to bridge Microsoft and Nextcloud

Discover six proven ways to bridge Microsoft and Nextcloud for a direct transition toward stronger data control and digital sovereignty.

1. Outlook integration: Turn email attachments into secure collaboration

Email attachments remain one of the most common sources of data duplication, security risks, and version chaos.

The Nextcloud Outlook add-in solves this, as you can convert attachments into secure Nextcloud links with a single click. So, instead of attaching files to emails, you can send secure Nextcloud links.

Files stay on the Nextcloud server while recipients access them via these controlled sharing links.

Key capabilities include:

• Convert attachments into Nextcloud share links
• Insert file upload links so recipients can send files directly to your Nextcloud
• Keep files centralized instead of scattered across inboxes
• Maintain full control over access permissions and expiration settings

The integration works across Outlook on Windows, macOS, and the web. This means your team can keep using their familiar email workflows while ensuring files remain under organizational control.

2. Exchange Connector: Sync contacts and calendars seamlessly

Calendars and contacts are just as crucial to everyday operations as email is.

The Exchange Connector enables bidirectional synchronization between Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft 365 and Nextcloud calendars and contacts.

This ensures that:

• Meetings scheduled in Exchange appear in Nextcloud
• Contact lists stay consistent across both platforms
• Teams can transition gradually without disrupting scheduling workflows

By integrating these productivity components, your organization can shift collaboration workloads toward Nextcloud while preserving compatibility with Microsoft systems.

3. Microsoft Teams integration: Secure collaboration without leaving the interface

Your organization might still rely heavily on Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration. But in your search for more digital sovereignty, a self-hosted communication tool might be more suitable.

The Nextcloud Teams integration allows your organization to bring secure file sharing and storage into the Teams environment without storing sensitive data in the Microsoft cloud.

Users can:

• Access files stored on their private Nextcloud server
• Share large files directly within Teams chats and channels
• Send secure messages and documents through Nextcloud links
• Maintain control over where sensitive files are stored

This integration lets teams keep their existing platform, while your organization can safeguard the communication data.

4. SharePoint and Windows network drive integration

Large organizations rarely store files in just one system. Network drives, SharePoint libraries, object storage, and legacy systems often coexist.

Nextcloud’s External Storage framework allows admins to connect many of these systems directly into the Nextcloud interface.

As Nextcloud supports different storage technologies, you can always find a solution that fits your needs, including Windows network shares (CIFS/SMB), NFS, and local storage, or SharePoint repositories.

Once connected, these storage systems appear inside Nextcloud as if they were native folders. This allows users to access and collaborate on files from multiple backends without leaving the Nextcloud interface.

5. Active Directory integration: Keep identity management intact

Identity systems are often the backbone of enterprise IT infrastructure. Nextcloud integrates directly with LDAP and Active Directory. By doing so, your organization can keep its existing identity management while accessing the benefits of a sovereign collaboration platform.

This integration provides:

• Automatic user provisioning from Active Directory
• Synchronization of groups and permissions
• Single sign-on (SSO) support
• Two-factor authentication capabilities

Administrators can manage users centrally while extending authentication and access control into Nextcloud.

The platform’s plugin architecture also allows your organization to extend these capabilities with additional enterprise authentication and automation tools.

6. Office Online integration: Full Microsoft document compatibility

Documents remain one of the strongest anchors of the Microsoft ecosystem. Nextcloud addresses this by integrating with Microsoft Office Online Server, enabling your organization to edit Office files directly within its own infrastructure.

Office Online Server includes:

• Word Online
• Excel Online
• PowerPoint Online
• OneNote Online

When integrated with Nextcloud, teams can collaboratively edit Office documents in real time while keeping files stored on private infrastructure.

Because Office Online Server runs on dedicated servers or virtual machines, it fits into on-premises or private cloud deployments.

Your organization gets the familiar Microsoft editing experience, but with full control over its document storage.

Bridging Nextcloud and Microsoft: a pragmatic path toward digital sovereignty

Digital sovereignty doesn’t have to mean abandoning familiar tools from one day to the next. For most organizations, a hybrid approach can offer a more realistic and less disruptive answer.

By integrating Microsoft systems with Nextcloud, your organization can maintain continuity for users while immediately reducing your reliance on Big Tech cloud providers.

Host your content collaboration solutions with an on-prem platform to keep sensitive data under your own governance, while you transition gradually toward a more sovereign infrastructure.

The six integration strategies as described here demonstrate that Nextcloud doesn’t force a binary choice between ecosystems.

Instead, it provides the flexibility to connect existing tools while steadily moving collaboration and data control into an environment you own.

The post Six ways to bridge Microsoft and Nextcloud: Set up your selection of on premise collaboration tools appeared first on Nextcloud.