Veiligheidsregio Brabant-Zuidoost: moving to Nextcloud

Veiligheidsregio Brabant-Zuidoost is a Dutch organization that prevents, reduces and combats incidents and disasters. Their mission is to guarantee the regional tasks when it comes to physical security and to prepare for emergency response and crisis management. They also ensure the restoration of normal life after a crisis. They chose Nextcloud to power their file sync and storage infrastructure. We talked to Roel Bevers to better understand the reasons behind their decision. Here is an edited version of that interview.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Please tell us about yourself, how are you involved with Veiligheidsregio Brabant Zuidoost and what work is being done there?

Roel Bevers: I have been working since 2008 at the Veiligheidsregio Brabant-Zuidoost. I began as junior system administrator and now I am the senior system-/network administrator. The Veiligheidsregio Brabant-Zuidoost is an organization in which the fire department, GHOR (medical services in the event of accidents and disasters) and RAV (regional ambulance services) work together to prevent incidents, disasters and to fight them.

When it comes to file sync and storage technologies, what are your core requirements?

To give the employees an alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive etc. Where the data is kept on-premise. An easy way to sync files and share them with others.

Would you say your needs are typical or do you have different or unique requirements?

When it comes to file sharing/sync, I’m not different from any other user within our organization.

How important is privacy and security for your requirements?

I think privacy and security for every business is important and an issue at the moment. Since 1 January 2016 the law hailing data leaks is active in the Netherlands.

Why did you choose Nextcloud over other solutions?

It’s a stable and affordable solution to sync and share files in an easy way. Keeping our data on premises was important. We were already familiar with ownCloud.

Why did you decide to become a customer, what value does Nextcloud GmbH provide you and your organization?

ownCloud became a very important tool within our organization. When we heard about Nextcloud developed by the former ownCloud developers we decided to switch to Nextcloud. We now have support through the basic enterprise subscription and we hope to keep the Nextcloud environment for a long time which is important for our users.

What role does open source play when choosing solution?

When a solution is open source and it fits in our needs we definitely have a look at it.

What new features do you want to see in Nextcloud that will help you?

The video call feature with screen sharing will help us.