For almost ten years, Jung von Matt has relied on Nextcloud as its trusted file-sharing and collaboration platform. Initially introduced in 2015 to replace FTP servers and mitigate compliance risks, Nextcloud became an essential tool for sharing and storing creative work.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced 80% of staff into remote work, it exposed the limitations of traditional SMB servers, particularly for macOS users handling large video files or complex Keynote presentations with tens of thousands of subfiles. Performance bottlenecks, compliance concerns, and lack of integration with other tools made change urgent.
In response, JvM launched a new, on-premises Nextcloud instance, optimized for macOS performance and designed to integrate with existing services such as Webex and Asana. The result is a modernized infrastructure supporting ~1,000 active users across ten locations, delivering faster performance, GDPR compliance, and cost avoidance of more than €300,000 annually compared to Microsoft 365.
Legacy SMB servers slowed macOS collaboration, especially with complex creative files. Remote access bottlenecks, fragmented tools, and strict on-prem data requirements created growing performance and compliance risks.
Nextcloud replaced SMB servers with a centralized, on-prem collaboration platform optimized for macOS. It delivers faster file access, integrates with existing tools, and keeps all creative data secure and GDPR-compliant.
Jung von Matt (JvM) is one of Europe’s most renowned independent advertising agencies, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. Founded in 1991, the group has grown to over 1,200 employees across nine offices in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with additional presence in the UK, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, South Korea, China, and the US.
JvM is known for its award-winning campaigns for leading global brands, offering full-service marketing and creative services. The company emphasizes independence, creativity, and technological innovation, values that extend to its IT infrastructure, where data sovereignty, flexibility, and user experience are non-negotiable.
For a creative powerhouse like Jung von Matt, tehcnology is the backbone of collaboration across campaigns, teams, and borders. However. JvM’s IT infrastructure was increasingly stretched and they could no longer rely on the legacy SMB servers. With half the workforce remote, creatives needed fast, reliable access to files regardless of location.
Beyond performance, there were also data sovereignty concerns, as JvM neded to keep all data on-premises, ensuring GDPR complaince and independence from US hyperscalers
In essence they face the following pain points:
With nearly a decade of positive experience using Nextcloud, JvM trusted the platform to deliver the foundation for a modern, scalable collaboration environment. As such, the IT team designed a new Nextcloud instance with stability, performance, and long-term scalability at its core.
The new instance was kept intentionally streamlined: no unnecessary dependencies, fewer risks of updates breaking workflows, and a stable “workhorse” environment. At the same time, Nextcloud’s modular architecture gave the IT team freedom to extend functionality as needed. With Nextcloud Office (Collabora), teams can co-edit documents securely on-premises. With federated sharing, files can move seamlessly across departments and even agencies, without leaving the protected environment.
Perhaps most importantly, Nextcloud’s open-source, standards-based approach allowed integration with existing tools. Webex and Asana remained part of the daily workflow, but now tied into a sovereign platform that gave IT visibility and control.
To set up the new instance, the agency‘s team went through the following implementation steps:
While the new environment is still new (no long-term results), there JvM could observe some immediate benefits.
The new Nextcloud instance simply works. For the agency, that means creatives can focus entirely on delivering campaigns without being slowed down by infrastructure.
For Jung von Matt the new Nextcloud instance is the foundation of their IT strategy for the next decade. Having this infrastructure in place means the agency can now foculs on scaling its use across all departments and location.
The plan is to centralize file services across all agencies in the DACH region, replacing siloed servers with a single, sovereign collaboration platform. Local Samba servers will be retained only for archival purposes, while all active work will move to Nextcloud. This not only simplifies operations but also reinforces the agency’s compliance-first strategy by ensuring sensitive client data remains under direct control.
At the same time, Jung von Matt is closely monitoring Nextcloud’s development roadmap, particularly around macOS client enhancements. With creatives working primarily on Apple devices, the IT team is invested in contributing feedback and even advocating for new features that could make large-scale macOS deployments even smoother. Thanks to Nextcloud’s modular architecture, JvM has the flexibility to expand its collaboration toolkit on its own terms, without introducing unnecessary dependencies.
Creative agencies working primarily on macOS benefit from a collaboration platform that can handle large creative files quickly and reliably, even when projects contain thousands of assets. With Nextcloud, teams can access and share files smoothly across offices and remote locations without the performance issues common with legacy file servers. At the same time, Nextcloud keeps all data under full organizational control, helping agencies protect sensitive client materials and meet compliance requirements. By centralizing file services and integrating with existing tools, Nextcloud simplifies workflows, reduces infrastructure complexity, and avoids escalating SaaS licensing costs, allowing creative teams to focus on what really matters to them: delivering creativity.
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