Nextcloud is a self-hosted open source content collaboration platform that provides the benefits of online collaboration without the compliance and security risks, and helps you enhance your productivity and communication within the team.
What is a content collaboration platform?
A content collaboration platform (CCP) is a platform designed to facilitate content productivity and collaboration in an organization. A CCPs are an evolution of Enterprise File Sync and Share solutions (EFSS) and typically enable collaborative editing of documents, supports video and text chat, task management and basic content management and workflow capabilities.
What makes Nextcloud so popular for team collaboration?
Key benefits of Nextcloud
With over 400.000 deployments, Nextcloud is the most popular open source self-hosted content collaboration platform you can download. It scales from a Raspberry Pi with 2 users to globally distributed installations with tens of millions of users at major hosting providers.
Totally under your control
There is no need to compromise with outsourcing. Rather than hosting your sensitive company data with a third party, keep it 100% under control of your IT team while offering the highly secure access and communication facilities that your employees need to be productive.
A complete collaboration platform
An easy, familiar user interface means efficient work. Nextcloud is unique by offering the most extensive built in communication and collaboration technology in the industry, negating the complexity of running and connecting multiple separate solutions like document collaboration software, file sync and share tools, video conferencing and more.
Military-grade security
Nextcloud offers industry-first, unique solutions like Video Verification, machine-learning-driven suspicious login detection, extensive multi-factor authentication solutions and more. Extensive logging and monitoring show users, administrators and auditors the exact flow of data and who had access at what time.
Hub integrates the four key Nextcloud products Files, Talk, Groupware and Office into a single platform, optimizing the flow of collaboration.
Integrated collaboration platform
- Easy access anywhere
- Powerful access control
- Infrastructure integration
- Designed for humans
- Group chat
- Web conferencing
- Screensharing
- Unique protection
- Avoid data leaks
- Team planning
- Email made easy
- Easy access, anywhere
- Use your existing apps
- Self-hosted online office
- View and reply to comments
- Chat or have a call while editing
- docx/pptx/xlsx support
- Context Write to create content based on existing documents and data
- Context Chat to answer questions about your data
- AI image generation and free prompt text generation
- Accessible from the top toolbar and integrated in apps
Nextcloud Files offers a self-hosted file storage and sync platform with powerful collaboration capabilities with desktop, mobile and web interfaces
Nextcloud Talk delivers on-premises, private audio/video conferencing and text chat through browser and mobile interfaces with integrated screen sharing and SIP integration.
Nextcloud Groupware integrates Calendar, Contacts, Mail and other productivity features to help teams get their work done faster, easier and on your terms.
Nextcloud Office is a powerful LibreOffice-based online office suite with collaborative editing, which supports all major document, spreadsheet and presentation file formats and works in all modern browsers.
The first local AI assistant that is built into the Nextcloud Hub collaboration platform. Integrated across apps, it can generate content, answer questions about your data, summarize emails, translate, and much more.
Solutions
Nextcloud use cases
Nextcloud is committed to provide self hosted open source cloud file storage technology that is a perfect fit for the privacy and security of your enterprise
The problem
Data sovereignty and SaaS
The main issue with team collaboration solutions like Google Apps and Office 365 is data sovereignty. To use these platforms, enterprises have to hand over their sensitive data to the vendor. This brings security and compliance risks.
A wide range of work-arounds for this problem exist, from complicated key management solutions to external encryption tools. But despite the added costs and complexity they bring, the fundamental issue remains that one has to ultimately trust the vendor with their data.
The solution
Self-hosted file sync and share platform
The vast majority of businesses has existing hosting and storage solutions in place, monitored and certified through the years. Building on this existing base using an on-premises solution gives a massive advantage in terms of quick deployment, compliance and security.
Nextcloud has emerged as the most deployed file sync collaboration tool in this space, delivering the widest range of integrated capabilities with the highest security standards.
Why self-hosting?
Because your data is everywhere
Right now, nearly ALL data there is about you is stored at half a dozen companies, with names changing per country (Facebook, wechat, Vk, Google, Weibo, Tencent, Microsoft). They know where you live, what you search for, who you talk to, what you buy, what you eat and –probably– what you think.
Because knowledge is power
Your data represents who you are and can easily be abused. And power gets abused. Always. Maybe by a local politician who doesn’t like that you discovered his fraud. A local police woman who likes your boyfriend. A well connected businessman who likes to buy your store for cheap. A crime syndicate annoyed you try to help drug addicts kick off.
Maybe you just care about privacy
Even if your data isn’t abused –they promise not to, right?– isn’t it nobody’s business what you do?
We believe privacy is a right, a foundation for democracy. And we like to help you get it back.
And running your own, private Nextcloud server is the best way to get started!
Nextcloud Hub
A complete collaboration platform
Nextcloud offers the most comprehensive, deeply integrated on-premises collaboration platform on the market, replacing dozens of other tools. Switching between these different tools is more than cumbersome and inefficient: it also increases the chance for mistakes that can result in data leaks.
- Secure file exchange within and between organizations
- Collaborative editing of docx, xlsx and more
- File versioning, restore and retention control
- Commenting on files, adding notes to share links
- Integrated chat and secure audio-video calls
- Calendar, mail and task management tools
- Comprehensive set of security capabilities
24/7 support with Nextcloud Enterprise
Where competitors rely on a ‘support team’ walling you off from the engineering knowledge you need, Nextcloud provides direct access to the real experts. After all, you need to get work done and can’t afford first having to go through the “did you try to turn it off and on again” conversation before you get taken serious.
A real-world-tested file storage
Unlike most competitors, Nextcloud has been battle-hardened by extensive usage in a wide variety of scenarios. From an intuitive interface, crucial to keep support requests down at large universities, to extensive security features required in the financial sector, Nextcloud has been tuned to deliver what is needed to work efficiently.
Equally important, each of its capabilities can be tuned and, if needed, disabled, ensuring a minimum attack surface and less opportunities for costly mistakes.
Users can access data on a FTP drive shared with another company, fully subject to the strict control by IT; while data stored on an external object storage could be encrypted using server-side encryption so the storage provider has no way to compromise their security.
Meanwhile, files from a specific team can be enforced to be end-to-end encrypted on their clients, protecting their files from even the worst case of a full server breach.
In the back-end, IT can use a mix of local NFS or SharePoint storage, public S3 compatible storage and even blockchain technology to find the perfect mix between performance, reliability, security and cost.
The layered approach to security makes sure users have the maximum amount of productivity in their web interface while making sure sensitive data receives the ultimate protection, client-to-client. Keeping it all in a single solution simplifies management and avoids mistakes from users or IT departments that might cause costly data leaks.
Feature highlights
Content collaboration platforms offer impressive productivity gains but lead to a loss of control over business critical and sensitive data. As a fully on-premises solution, Nextcloud provides the benefits of online collaboration without the compliance and security risks.
Integrated groupware, chat and project management
Nextcloud features tightly integrated chat, project management, mail, calendaring and more. Chat messages can be directly transformed into tasks, task deadlines are visible in the Calendar and files can be attached to a task from the sharing dialog.
All about Hub
Secure view in action
With secure view, our online office solutions can be configured to open PDF files, images and text files, making these files available in a watermark-protected way, while downloads and other apps are disabled using File Access Control. This setup is useful when data has to be protected from leaking but still has to be made available for review, as in a virtual data room scenario.
More about security
AI-powered content collaboration tool
The best way to introduce our new, intelligent features is through the Smart Picker, a cross-application feature enabling users to use AI (and much more) in their daily work flow.
More about AI
With unique layered encryption
Nextcloud offers a supremely easy to use, well integrated file sync and share solution with an uniquely layered approach to security. Together with the support for nearly any storage technology, it features server-side encryption and offers the ability to employ end-to-end, client side encryption for a subset of user files.
More about encryption
100% transparency
Nextcloud features extensive monitoring and auditing capabilities to ensure actions of all users are transparent, both to the users themselves and to auditors.
More about monitoring
Contact us today to get started
With military-grade security and first-class communication and collaboration technology, Nextcloud offers the full array of functions needed to do due dilligence without giving up control over your data.
Frequently asked questions
What is a content collaboration platform?
A content collaboration platform (CCP) is a platform designed to facilitate content productivity and collaboration in an organization.
Why do businesses need a content collaboration platform?
Businesses need a content collaboration platform to streamline content creation, enhance collaboration among team members, improve version control, and ensure consistent branding and messaging across different channels.
What features should I look for in a content collaboration platform?
Key features to consider include real-time collaboration tools, version control, access permissions, integration with other software, document storage, and user-friendly interfaces.
Are content collaboration platforms secure?
Most CCPs prioritize security, offering encryption, access controls, and audit trails to protect sensitive content. It’s essential to choose a CCP with robust security measures and compliance certifications. The most secure CCPs are self-hosted, where enterprises have total control of their data
What industries benefit the most from content collaboration platforms?
CCPs are valuable in various industries, including governments, enterprises, service providers, education, healthcare and any field that requires collaborative document creation and management.
Are there free or open-source content collaboration platforms available?
Yes, some content collaboration platforms like Nextcloud are completely free and open source, offering a rich features list.
