Self-Hosted Nextcloud 13 Brings End-to-end Encryption, Video/Text Chat and Enhanced Collaboration

host of performance and collaboration improvements transform working online

February 6 2018, Stuttgart, Germany. Nextcloud, the globally leading supplier of self-hosted productivity solutions, announces the immediate availability of Nextcloud 13, doubling down on the core of enterprise file sync and share with impressive performance improvements and security enhancements including its unique end-to-end encryption and improving collaboration with the introduction of Nextcloud Talk, a self-hosted, secure video and text chat solution. Facilitating secure and efficient collaboration across locations and devices is becoming key for modern IT departments and Nextcloud features a uniquely powerful, self-hosted platform combining absolute control over data with easy communication, ubiquitous data access and real-time document editing on web, desktop and mobile devices.

„Nextcloud 13 sets the bar high in an environment where many vendors still believe just syncing files suffices for modern organizations. Our forward-looking development strategy is the reason behind our meteoric rise in the market

said Frank Karlitschek, Founder and Managing Director at Nextcloud GmbH.

With a laser-sharp focus on enabling modern employees to be productive while keeping IT in control over the data they work on, Nextcloud will continue to push the boundaries of what a secure, self-hosted file exchange and collaboration platform offers.

The first major innovation in Nextcloud 13 is End-to-end Encryption support for the Nextcloud clients, providing the ultimate protection for ultra-sensitive data. This technology is unique in the software industry by providing an enterprise-ready solution which:

• can encrypt data on a per-folder level rather than all-or-nothing approach
• does not require users to remember or exchange passwords
• does not require re-uploading data upon sharing
• features an optional off-line administrator recovery key
• allows full audit logging
• can be combined with our File Access Control feature so administrator can enforce aspects of End-to-end Encryption
• protects from identity theft with our Cryptographic Identity Protection feature

End-to-end Encryption is available as tech preview in the mobile Android and iOS clients and our Desktop client for Windows, Mac and Linux. Over the next few months we expect to stabilize the implementations while we take feedback from our user and customer base.

Existing end-to-end encryption technologies require complicated key handling, risk data loss on users forgetting passwords, might compromise security and are often awkwardly bolt upon existing file exchange solutions

said Bjoern Schiessle, server encryption and federation specialist at Nextcloud GmbH.

Nextcloud’s solution is designed with the end user in mind, making sharing and adding devices seamless while offering absolute, uncompromising confidentiality of the data.

Nextcloud 13 also features the debut of Nextcloud Talk, the first fully self-hosted, complete audio/video and text communication platform for enterprises providing the highest degree of control over their data and communication. Nextcloud Talk is a fully open source video meeting software, on premise hosted and end-to-end encrypted. Self-hosting guarantees even the important metadata about who called whom and when, and does not leak to third parties. Nextcloud Talk offers:

• real-time and asynchronous communication with push notifications, calls and chat on any device
• Integration in business workflow with calendar invitations and calls directly from Nextcloud Files
• Screen and note sharing with participant moderation capabilities
• 100% secure peer-to-peer, end-to-end encrypted calls, mediated by self-hosted server

Nextcloud Talk lowers the barriers to self-hosting a privacy-respecting audio/video communication service for home users and enterprises alike

said Jos Poortvliet, head of marketing at Nextcloud GmbH.

Business users have optional access to the Spreed High Performance Back-end offering enterprise-class scalability, reliability, and features through a Nextcloud subscription.

Nextcloud 13 doubles down on the core of file handling, delivering vastly improved performance and reliability with 85% faster LDAP performance and up to 10x read/write speeds in external storage handling. The LDAP support was also expanded to allow managing an LDAP server through a plugin-architecture, with example applications available for customers. Complementing the changes to LDAP and storage, Nextcloud developers improved the performance of Server-side Encryption and made many incremental updates to ensure a smooth user experience for Nextcloud users. Server search, now also supported in our Android client, was modified to reduce server load and improve responsiveness during large searches. Several enhancements to the web interface decreased page load times in some of our test cases by over 50%.

A large amount of smaller, incremental enhancements to Nextcloud was made.

• Security capabilities include support for multi-key two-factor authentication, ability to restrict login to specific IP ranges, a new token-based login-flow for the clients and improved update notifications as part of our ongoing efforts to decrease the barrier to keeping a Nextcloud server updated and secure.
• In the collaboration area, Nextcloud now features auto-completion of user names in comments, resulting in a notification to the user whose name was mentioned; a new and improved Elasticsearch based full-text search technology with lower overhead for the server; and direct preview links for shares. Our group sharing app Circles integrates Activities to help users track what happens to their data; introduces federation support for cross-cloud collaboration; improves invitations to large numbers of users with Mass Invite; allows adding people by email address or contact; and integrate with our new Search capabilities. The web interface also removes limitations on file upload support, shows user quota in the side bar and improves the External Sites integration, also showing them in mobile apps.
• Our Groupware solution was updated to support free/busy scheduling in native calendar applications like Thunderbird Lightning; show meeting invites in the calendar; auto-provisioning of user email addresses in Mail; and Files-from-Mail allows the configuration of a special file exchange email address which automatically stores all attachments in a smart folder structure in Nextcloud.
• Other improvements include UI work like a new copy action and easier multi-select of files, improved Hi-DPI support, Sentry crash reporting integration and many smaller UX and accessibility improvements.

With a combination of groundbreaking, industry-first innovations and a strong emphasis on refined Enterprise File Sync and Share capabilities, Nextcloud 13 breaks new ground for on premise productivity, empowering organizations to take back control over their data.

About Nextcloud
Nextcloud offers the industry-leading fully open source solution for on premise data handling and communication with an uncompromising focus on security and privacy and unprecedented scalability. Nextcloud brings together universal access to data with next-generation secure communication and collaboration capabilities under direct control of IT and integrated with existing compliant infrastructure. Nextcloud’s open, modular architecture, emphasis on security and advanced federation capabilities enable modern enterprises to leverage their existing assets within and across the borders of their organization. For more information, visit https://nextcloud.com or follow @Nextclouders on Twitter.

* – contributions counted all code in our project github.com/Nextcloud, including code from third party libraries used in Nextcloud and code developed before Nextcloud was founded in 2016. See the summary on openhub.net.

Press contacts
Nextcloud GmbH
Jos Poortvliet
Kronenstraße 22A
D-70173 Stuttgart, Germany
e-mail: pr@nextcloud.com