As the world gets smaller and smaller thanks to digital transformation, the modern workspace becomes more and more an integrated workspace. This means digital collaboration with external contacts must be organized efficiently and securely, whether with accountants, lawyers, the PR firm or a B2B customer’s whole corporate procurement department. Successful collaboration needs to be convenient, secure and in compliance with applicable regulation.
Fortunately, ownCloud already has a lot of experience with secure and efficient collaboration across organizational boundaries – many well-known universities and research institutions around the globe are happy ownCloud users. This know-how helps companies of any size to straightforwardly enable collaboration across their business ecosystems by creating integrated workspaces.
These ownCloud features enable secure and efficient integrated workspaces
A number of ownCloud features enable productive and secure work across organizational boundaries. For example, federation sharing enables collaborating on files and folders with contacts whose organizations also use ownCloud, or a file cloud compatible with the Open Cloud Mesh API. Those external users are addressed by their Federated Cloud ID, akin to an email adress. This also works for multiple branches of an organization in locations with different jurisdictions. It would set up ownCloud for each distinct branch, sharing files and folders with the respective colleagues at other branches, skipping folders that have to be kept strictly in this jurisdiction for compliance reasons.
For collaboration with recurring contacts without a compatible file cloud for federation, the Guest User feature is a suitable option. Guests can access files and folders shared with them, even using the desktop client and the ownCloud app, like “real” users, just without their own storage quota.
For working with sporadic contacts, it’s helpful to create a Drop Folder – a password-protected folder to which a person or group outside the organization can upload, but whose contents they cannot see or list. Of course, rules and policies also apply to such folders, and of course those uploads too are checked by the File Firewall and the Antivirus Scanner.
ownCloud also offers a highly protected data room. With Secure View, documents requiring protection can be shared with a selected audience for viewing only, with watermarks and usage restrictions for maximum control.
ownCloud enables safe collaboration across business ecosystems
Across all features, expiry dates prevent compliance debacles arising from ‘forgotten’ shares. ownCloud’s File Lifecycle Management helps to keep documents only as long as they are needed. The Activity Stream and Auditing apps help organizations keep track of documents access. The Classification app automates policies towards documents.
With ownCloud, companies get a comprehensive and secure solution for collaboration, whether internally or with other companies. Its architecture and feature set also make ownCloud a sensible addition to public cloud services already used in the company that are not by themselves suitable for sensitive data.
