The sharp increase in remote work brings a lot of appreciation for secure and user-friendly platforms – which in turn drives strong demand for our services. In 2020, ownCloud grew by more than 50 percent, with our SaaS offering ownCloud.online growing by a whopping 200 percent.
Tech Preview on ownCloud Infinite Scale
Late last year, we released a first Tech Preview on ownCloud Infinite Scale. After two years of development, you can now check out what we’ve built, test it and look for any rough edges there may still be. And it is pretty cool, if we say so ourselves: Our new file platform, written in Go, is already mighty fast. Its three-tier microservice architecture means much more security and no more dependencies from webserver packages, PHP versions and databases. Oh, and it is language-agnostic for extensions! In January, we already released the second Tech Preview release, ownCloud Infinite Scale 1.1.0. Read more about the release, learn how to quickly install it and see how to file bug reports in GitHub. You can read more about the microservices and the security aspects of ownCloud Infinite Scale too.
Our new web frontend
While developing for ownCloud Infinite Scale, we not only prepared the Desktop Clients and Mobile Apps to use its capabilities to the fullest extent, we also created an all-new browser interface – ownCloud Web. Built using a state-of-the-art JavaScript framework, it is completely disentangled from the backend, making it much more secure and scalable. And we think it is pretty cool that it is also available for ownCloud 10 through an extension available in the ownCloud Marketplace.
Future-proofing ownCloud 10
The end of 2020 also saw the release of ownCloud 10.6, the version that future-proofs ownCloud 10 by providing authentication through OpenID Connect and an external Identity Provider, supporting the new ownCloud Web frontend and enabling a bridge mode with ownCloud Infinite Scale to support the scale and speed of ownCloud Infinite Scale while at the same time continuing to provide the familiar features and functionality of ownCloud 10. It is also available as an Appliance, a pre-configured virtual machine using the Univention Corporate Server.
Making sovereign productivity easier
As a platform for the sovereign storage, reliable sync and safe sharing of files, ownCloud is well-suited as a data hub for the tools that power your productivity. In a short tutorial, we show you how to sync notes with Joplin and ownCloud, creating a nice sovereign alternative to public cloud offerings like Evernote. To speed up your ownCloud 10 evaluations and rollouts, we’ve published a tutorial for a five minute install of ownCloud, using Docker.
Welcome back
Last but not least, we welcome Klaas Freitag who took over the responsibility for development and engineering at ownCloud as the new CTO. Klaas has worked at ownCloud before, having played a key role in developing the Desktop Client back in the day. Welcome, Klaas!
The personal take of the month, by Klaas Freitag, Chief Technology Officer
Klaas Freitag, CTO at ownCloud
The last few weeks were quite busy at ownCloud. The first two Tech Preview releases of ownCloud Infinite Scale had all teams at ownCloud buzzing with excitement. In Engineering, we were working hard to get as many glitches cleaned up as even possible and are thankful for the support and vibrant mood of all the other teams – it was only possible with combined effort.
What makes ownCloud Infinite Scale so exciting? Well, so far, it is in the Tech Preview phase, and not yet ready for production use, but it already showcases some of the concepts that we’re building on. Based on the great language Go and utilizing the well-known go-micro framework, ownCloud Infinite Scale feels right at home in modern cloud computing environments. Its main characteristics: Easy to deploy and easy to scale, flexible and fast.
New concepts like the database-less design are here to prove themselves for future use. You can now check it out for yourself, and even if not all is there yet, we’re already very proud and happy of the current state.
Rewrites of projects are never easy. And many say you shouldn’t do it. But at some point, there is no good way around it. The world has moved on, and we just can’t justify solving 2021’s problems with paradigms and concepts from 2011. Rather, we continue to embrace innovation and make it tangible in our solutions.
And that is exactly what we ownClouders are striving for: Developing the most innovative solution in file, sync and share for the benefit of our users like you.
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