Deutsche Telekom offers Nextcloud Office to its cloud customers

Hundreds of millions of users use Microsoft 365 or Google Docs as their office software. But, if you're not keen on using a proprietary program and keeping your files on a proprietary platform, Deutsche Telekom is now offering another approach for its German and Austrian users: Open-source, NextCloud Office.

Nextcloud Office is a Sofware-as-a-Service (SaaS) office suite. It supports collaborative editing for groups. Based on LibreOffice and Collabora, it supports all major document, spreadsheet, and presentation file formats. You can use it via a web browser on Linux, macOS, and Windows desktop and Android and iOS mobile applications. In short, it's a complete replacement for all but the fussiest Microsoft Office and Google Docs users.

This comes on top of Nextcloud and Deutsche Telekom already offering storage on the telecommunication's giant European-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) file servers. As such, privacy and security are a big part of this offering. Nextcloud CEO and founder Frank Karlitschek said, "this is a significant win for privacy in Europe."

Why because MagentaCLOUD is 100% EU hosted on Deutsche Telekom's Open Telekom Cloud. That means, in turn, it confirms the EU's strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations. Combine that with the software's open-source code, and you get the safest, most private IaaS and SaaS cloud you can get short of running Nextcloud or your own mix of open-source programs on your own servers.

For now, only Europeans in German-speaking countries can make use of this service.

With about 2 million active users who are working with over 2 billion files containing more than 6 petabytes of data, clearly, the approach works, though. Since Deutsche Telecom owns the United States' T-Mobile, we hope that the company introduces its Nextcloud-based services to the US market sometime soon.

Other noteworthy Linux and open-source stories:

• Linux desktop powers consider uniting for an app store

• Open Source Wireshark Network Protocol Analyzer (Finally) Gets its Own Foundation

• Linux's VGEM Kernel Driver Being Rewritten In Rust

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SCaLE is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area. It's well worth your time!