The interview
Q: What is your name?
Frank Karlitschek. Founder and CEO of Nextcloud.
Q: What is your product?
Nextcloud is a collaboration software. Similar to Microsoft 365 or Google Workplace. But 100% open source, our users can host is where ever they want (on prem) and it’s a real European company.
Q: Is it SaaS? PaaS? IaaS? Other?
We only produce the software. Our users and customers can take it and put it on any infrastructure they like to create their own service. This gives anyone real control, security and privacy over their data.
Q: Do you provide your technology to cloud operators?
Yes. Examples are OVH, German Telekom, IONOS and others.
Q: Are you a market leader? Who do you consider the leader in your market? Does GAFAM play any role in your market?
We are the market leader if the data should stay on premise or in Europe.
Q: What are the unique selling propositions of your product? Is your solution different or better than competing solutions?
The functionality is comparable with Microsoft, Google, Box, Dropbox and others. But the data stays local, under the control of our customers. This solves GDPR and Cloud Act problems of GAFAM.
Q: Which free and open source software solutions do you use?
We run on top of Linux, storage systems like Ceph or databases like MariaDB.
Q: What components did you develop yourself?
All of them. With the help of our open source community of course.
Q: What are the strong points of your technology?
The main difference is that it’s 100% open source and the users and customers are in full control of the data, software and the service.
Q: Can you name users or clients of your solution? Preferably in the CAC40, DAX30, Fortune500, European governments?
German governments, French governments, Swedish governments, European Commission, ARD/ZDF german television, Siemens, ...
Q: Why did this client choose your solution rather the solution of the market leader or GAFAM?
They want to have a 100% compliance solution. Protecting digital sovereignty, keep the application and the data local.
Q: What European policies do you suggest to ensure sustainable development of your technology and its adoption?
I think it’s important that Europe protects its European values, privacy and security of the citizens, make sure that Europe has its own cloud and software industry to reduce dependencies.
Q: To what extent are the interoperability projects financed by France and Europe likely to guarantee the development of European cloud technologies?
It’s a good idea to enforce and finance interoperability technologies. But it’s a lot of work to break the dominance of GAFAM.
Q: Can you give us an idea of sales/staff/clients/end users over the last 3 years?
We have around 800 enterprise and governments clients. We are around 80 full time employees. We don’t know the enduser numbers because we don’t have and monitor the data.
Q: Tell us about a successful implementation. How did you implement it, why was it a success, where is this implementation today? Plans for the future? How is the relation with the client? Did the client help you get other clients?
There are many examples. One example is German Telekom. Last year we helped them to adopt Nextcloud as the basis of their MagentaCloud service for 3.6 millions users. This was a big success for all parties. They can now offer a pure European service to their customers.