Deutsche Telekom offers Nextcloud Office to its cloud customers
MagentaCLOUD users will now be able to use Nextcloud Office.
Steven Vaughan-Nichols
March 01, 2023
Nextcloud Office
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:
SCALE 20X is Coming!
SCaLE 20x – the 20th Annual Southern California Linux Expo – is scheduled for March 9-12, 2023, at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, CA.
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!