By now you may have heard the announcement from Seagate that they are shutting down their cloud storage service, Wuala, this coming November. This gives users a little less than two months to back up any files they have stored in the cloud or risk it being lost forever. Is it just me or does this sort of sound like an eviction notice? “Get your stuff and get out or lose it.”
While I feel for Wuala and their parent company, I really feel bad for all those users who are now facing storage eviction. They paid for the service, and to turn around and have the service shut down – bummer. I know they will be receiving refunds, but can the company refund the amount of time it will take for their users to back-up their files? I am only imagining the number files that will be deleted on November 15th and I can’t help but shudder. But really, all of this could have been avoided.
While there are real upsides to using public cloud services, this is just another example why the best option is to leave your data where it is and go on-prem. If you are in control, this can’t happen to you. ownCloud Server, our community based file sync and share option, offers users free storage and more control over their data. Enterprise Edition offers more for business users, and also remains on premise. Your files stay in your hands, so, let’s knock on a big piece of wood here, if for some farfetched reason ownCloud, Inc is unable to support you any longer, you will not have to resort to backing up your files or face the impending doom of losing them. You own the software, and the massive ownCloud community will still remain.
So here’s a shout out to all those Wuala users out there, come on over to ownCloud. Try the ownCloud Server, or our virtual appliance. Control your own data rather than placing it in the hands of someone else who just might decide to longer keep it safe for you. With ownCloud you can rest assured you and your data will never be evicted.
