Located in the bustling city of Tokyo, Japan, Meiji University is a renowned private research university that has been in existence for over 140 years. Founded by three jurists, it is considered to be one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in Japan. Meiji University has four campuses spread across the greater Tokyo area, and it currently boasts a student population of around 33,000, supported by a staff just short of 3,000.

Move to Nextcloud Hub

Meiji University looked to improve its Education and Research System (ERS), a virtual infrastructure server group, utilized by both faculty members and students. With more than 900 PCs and 40 printers in circulation, the University recognized the need for a more versatile storage system to meet its growing demands.

Requirements:

• Implement a new storage infrastructure for use in education and research
• Enable access through web browsers and smartphone apps
• Facilitate secure and easy file sharing with users on and off campus
• Ensure secure and easy file sharing with non-domain users
• Provide flexible support for BYOD and other access methods
• Reduce operating costs by utilizing open source online storage

After careful evaluation, Meiji University found that Nextcloud Hub was the ideal solution to meet its needs, and the university decided to implement it with the help of the partner Stylez. As a Japan-based Nextcloud partner, Stylez specializes in providing open-source solutions to customers in the Japanese region. With its team of experts possessing strong technical capabilities and a deep understanding of open-source technology, Stylez was well-equipped to support the implementation of Nextcloud Hub at Meiji University.

Convenience unlocked

Since its introduction in early 2021, Nextcloud Hub has brought significant improvements to the file-sharing and collaboration experience of Meiji University’s students and faculty. The platform offers a secure and easy-to-use platform, making it an ideal solution for their needs.

For instance, Nextcloud Hub enabled users at Meiji University to access their personal folders on campus storage remotely via a web browser or smartphone app. This feature proved to be tremendously popular among users, with many downloading the Nextcloud app on their smartphones right away. With this new feature, file sharing became instantly more secure and convenient for users both on and off campus.

With Nextcloud Hub, faculty members at Meiji University can now seamlessly share files with external collaborators and send large files as email attachments. Previously, the university’s Windows file service struggled to support the high demand for file sharing and lacked user-friendliness, functionality and speed. However, with Nextcloud Hub, these issues have been resolved, and faculty members can now enjoy a more efficient and reliable file-sharing experience.

Open source leading Universities

Unlike traditional cloud storage services that are expensive, lead to vendor lock-in and lack flexibilty, Nextcloud offers an appealing alternative. As an open source platform, Nextcloud, Nextcloud eliminates the risks, complications, and limitations of vendor-lock-in allowing users to benefit from a wide range of features and functions. With Nextcloud, the possibilities for customization and flexibility are virtually limitless.

Meiji University quickly realized the advantages of adopting an open-source online storage solution, such as the ability to maintain on-premises operations and access publicly available source code. With this approach, the university has been able to customize and optimize its file-sharing and collaboration system to meet its specific needs.

Shota Suzuki, a systems engineer at the Ikuta Media Support Office and Information Media Department, was particularly impressed with the transparency and flexibility of Nextcloud. With access to the platform’s source code, he was able to gain a deep understanding of the system and work with it more effectively. Additionally, Suzuki was able to use Nextcloud to enhance his skills and knowledge, contributing to ongoing improvements and developments at Meiji University.

For the full story on Meiji University switching to Nextcloud, check out our case study. Nextcloud case studies feature real-life use cases from customers who made the switch to Nextcloud. By exploring these case studies, you can learn about diverse requirements, the implementation process and results achieved by various customers across multiple industries, including education.

The post Meiji University in Japan Streamlines File Sharing and Collaboration with Nextcloud Hub appeared first on Nextcloud.

Our partner, Fujitsu, will be participating in Didacta, the world’s largest trade fair for education and training, from 7 to 11 March 2023 at Messe Stuttgart.

At this trade fair Fujitsu will be showcasing their Securon Connect education portal, which offers a broad range of services from Identity Management to Messaging and Video Conferencing, and even Moodle Learning Management as a Service. Additionally, Fujitsu will be presenting the use of Nextcloud Hub technology, as part of Securon Connect, which features real-time document editing, chat functionality, and video conferencing, making it the ideal solution for remote learning and collaboration.

Fujitsu is a reliable service provider and connecting system integrator in the education sector. We encourage you to visit Fujitsu at Didacta and learn how their solutions can transform the way we learn and work together. Their booth located in Hall 1, booth G13.2 as part of the Bündnis für Bildung (Alliance for Education) booth setup.

To find out more about Didacta, please visit the official website and to learn more about Fujitsu and their technologies for schools and universities, please visit their dedicated education page.

The post Fujitsu to Showcase Nextcloud Technology at Didacta appeared first on Nextcloud.

Shadow is probably best known for their remote gaming PC platform described as “the only fully realized cloud gaming service out there” and “the definitive cloud gaming experience” by cloudwards. It boasted 100.000 gamers in 2020 and has extended its platform since being bought by OVHcloud founder Octave Klaba. Shadow is now announcing the immediate availability of the Nextcloud based Shadow Drive in all European countries where Shadow services operate. This includes France, UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark. Spain will launch on December 7th.

Shadow Drive will allow users to store their data while keeping it accessible from anywhere. Data will be accessible via its web interface and through Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS (still in Beta) applications.

Our ambition to liberate technology from its hardware limitations also passes through Shadow Drive, our cloud storage solution, with the help of our prestigious partner Nextcloud, a partnership for which I thank Frank. We are particularly excited about this joint European project

— Eric Sèle, CEO of SHADOW

Initially soft launched this summer, Shadow Drive already counts nearly 25 000 users ahead of its general launch. The service will also be available on December 7th in Spain, and in 2023 in North America.

Shadow is free for up to 20 GB of storage. And by free, they do not mean freemium: “our users’ data will never be sold or used, and we will never integrate ads”, shares Shadow. A premium version of the service offers storage up to 2 TB.

Check the Downloads page for more details. As for all SHADOW services, it’s a non-binding offer, and it’s independent of any Shadow PC subscription.

We live in an age where all of our digital life, all of our communications are now in the cloud, and most of it is hosted overseas. I have no desire to live in a world where five giants own all the files in the world. That’s why I’m excited that we work together with SHADOW, as our two companies share values of excellence, openness, and European sovereignty.

— Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud

Shadow Drive is a European-owned and based service, meaning European users’ data will always remain in Europe, through European sovereign solutions.  You can discover more of what digital sovereignty means for Shadow and Nextcloud in a previous blog post.

The post Shadow first to connect remote PC technology with content collaboration appeared first on Nextcloud.

The integration makes it possible to share Nextcloud Files to a specific channel in Mattermost. Simply upload a file directly to a channel or send a shared link to collaborate with colleagues, friends, or family.

We aim to satisfy all our customers needs, so when Mattermost had an influx of its customers using Nextcloud, we knew we needed to join forces to provide a stronger user experience.

What is Mattermost?

Mattermost is an open source, self-hostable online chat service with file sharing and search. Their platform is often used for developer collaboration and includes channels, playbooks, and boards among other tools, plugins, and of course integrations.

Just like Nextcloud, Mattermost attracts a large community of contributers due to our similar missions for providing secure, on-premises platforms for collaboration.

Use cases

This integration can be used in many ways to improve workflows and simply make it easier if you have a team or customers that uses both platforms.

For instance, say you are planning a company event like a picnic. You are chatting in your team’s Mattermost channel and talk about the details. A colleague has last year’s staff dietary restriction’s document stored in her Nextcloud and wants to share it in the same channel for sake of simplicity and convenience. All she has to do is install and setup the Nextcloud-Mattermost integration, and it’s as easy as a few clicks.

How to setup the integration

First, you need to install the Nextcloud-Mattermost integration. You can find and install the integration app directly in Nextcloud’s app settings.

Now in your Nextcloud instance, go to Files and select one or more files you would like to share directly to Mattermost. Then click “Actions” or the 3-dots icon and you should see an option to “Send to Mattermost.”

Click on “Send to Mattermost” and since it’s the first time, you will have to go through a few simple steps to connect, login, and authorize Mattermost.

1) First, click on “Connect” (to Mattermost).

2) Next, login to your Mattermost account or create a new account in the pop-up window.

3) Then, click “Allow” to authorize the Nextcloud integration app to connect to your Mattermost account.

That’s it! You’ve now synced accounts and are permitted to send files from Nextcloud to Mattermost.

Now in the new pop-up window, you will have several options available.

1. Choose the channel you want to send the file to
2. Decide whether you want to upload file(s) or use a public link with the option to view only or edit
3. You can also enable setting an expiration date and/or a link password.
4. In addition, you can add a comment.
5. Finally, click “Send link” and you should see it in your Mattermost channel.

That’s it! You’ve sent your first file from Nextcloud to Mattermost.

Now anytime after this initial setup, it will be very simple to share your Nextcloud Files through Mattermost.

We hope you enjoy and make use of this integration, so you can speed up your productivity and instill smooth workfows, all the while using the collaboration platforms you choose and love.

So, if you’re a Mattermost user or just want to try it out, definitely go to the Nextcloud App Store and get this integration today!

The post Introducing the Nextcloud and Mattermost Integration! appeared first on Nextcloud.

The Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, Boverket, will be using a private packaged cloud service consisting of Nextcloud Hub for its 270 employees. Boverket wanted to procure a modern and functional platform that at the same time meets regulatory requirements. The housing agency has procured this digital collaboration cloud service based on findings and functional mappings presented within the digital collaboration report from the Swedish government.

This cloud service will be delivered and operated by our local partner Redpill Linpro and offers capabilities for video meetings, chat, file sharing and document management to the authority’s 270 employees.

This news follows a clear trend where Swedish and Nordic authorities, municipalities and companies are in need of solutions and services which are able to comply with their regulatory requirements.

More information

• Website of Boverket, Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning.
• Press release about Boverket on website Redpill Linpro.
• eSam Report “Digital collaboration platform for the public sector” from the Swedish government.

The post Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning chooses Nextcloud appeared first on Nextcloud.

We decided to partner up so users who employ Zimbra can benefit from the fusion of the these productivity tools. We have a shared vision on data privacy, so you can rest assured your data stays private.

If you’ve never used Zimbra before, it’s basically a collaboration platform best known for their open source email suite.

New integration features

The Nextcloud and Zimbra integration features the following new capabilities:

• Display Zimbra emails and events on the Nextcloud Dashboard

Now you can have a quick overview of any unread emails and important upcoming events right on your Nextcloud dashboard widget to start your work day off right.

• Search your Zimbra emails within Nextclouds unified search

Can’t find the email you’re looking for but know a keyword? Take advantage of the search provider for emails.

• See and search for Zimbra contacts within Nextclouds contact search

Zimbra and Nextcloud contacts are now synced, so you can search for a contact quickly and easily.

• Create a Nextcloud Talk conversation directly from within a Zimbra Calendar invite

Collaborate even easier

Once you install Zimbra, you can benefit from the best of both collaboration solutions. To further highlight the opportunities of this integration, explore the possibilities below:

• Ensure full governance of all conversations using message audits, flexible retention policies, powerful engagement analytics and dashboards, and more
• Leverage more advanced user governance features, access levels, and role-based permissions
• Easily map even the most complex organizational structure into groups, teams, and discussions

Install today!

You can install the Zimbra integration immediately which is available now at the Nextcloud App Store.

We hope this integration increases productivity, syncs your workflow, and gives you the best of both worlds.

The post Zimbra and Nextcloud announce new integration features! appeared first on Nextcloud.

During video calls with Webex, users can now collaborate without their documents leaving their Nextcloud server, benefiting from the security, compliance and control Nextcloud offers.

From the press release:

“The Webex Platform enables our customers to access third-party solutions and support critical workflows. Nextcloud offers data storage options that address compliance, security and digital sovereignty requirements for some organizations while working within Webex.”

— Jason Copeland, VP Product, Webex Platform

Find the Nextcloud embedded app in Webex on Webex App Hub including installation instructions.

Read the full press release for more details.

The post Nextcloud and CISCO introduce integration with Webex appeared first on Nextcloud.

Today we announce that NUITEQ and Nextcloud are integrating NUITEQ Stage into Nextcloud. This allows users to collaborate on a whiteboard during video calls.

It is easy to start a whiteboard session during a Talk call and insert documents from Nextcloud on a board. This will help team members, students or partners to efficiently work together while their documents remain safe and secure.

This will help organizations that use both Nextcloud and NUITEQ Stage for their collaboration, keeping their data secure and under their control.

Screenshots

The integration is available immediately. Contact Nextcloud or NUITEQ for a demonstration.

The post Nextcloud integrates NUITEQ Stage, enterprise-ready whiteboard appeared first on Nextcloud.

Our partner Redpill Linpro is organising their Digital Workplace Day event on September 8 in Stockholm. We sat down with Johan Bernhardsson, CEO of the Digital Workplace division at Redpill Linpro to discuss the digital workplace, the role of open source and Nextcloud in particular and their upcoming event Digital Workplace Day in Stockholm next month.

What is a digital workplace and what are you offering?

We want to empower employees and organisations by offering a flexible, reliable and trustworthy digital workplace solution. This workplace solution builds upon an integrated set of tools to help you collaborate with colleagues as if you were in the same room.

This involves more than just applying technology because you need to cater to the behaviour of your employees. Some dynamics of a physical working environment like water cooler conversations or social support systems are essential to any digital workplace deployment.

Your workplace solution uses quite some open source components. Can you explain the rationale behind that choice?

We want to offer our clients full control and maximum choice while at the same time provide them the required trust they need for the software they use. We use open source components for our digital workplace solution to check and validate how the software works. The option to be able to control the software leverages trust. Open source software usually drives maximum compatibility with other systems and assures excellent portability of your data.

That’s why we choose Nextcloud at the heart of our digital workplace offering. You can extend Nextcloud with other software components. Nextcloud is reliable and trustworthy because it lets you control the complete collaboration stack. And Nextcloud ensures you full portability of your data and even provides you means to move your data across systems.

How does data portability relate to data sovereignty and cloud sovereignty? And what do these terms mean in the context of a digital workplace?

Data portability is about making sure that all the collected data in your collaboration stack can be easily moved to another system. Some collaboration solutions claim to offer that but actually only provide a dump of your data. That’s pretty useless and I consider such practices a blatant abuse of the term data portability.

A lack of data portability can cause you serious problems when you want to move data from one (cloud) platform to another. Not taking data portability as a requirement can harm your collaboration stack and will limit your choices for the future.

Being able to move data is only one part of the equation, because you want to know how your data is used on the cloud platforms where you stored your data. A big driver is a directive like the GDPR where the data is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located. But honestly you want to look for a situation where you have your data in the cloud under your own control whatever data protection directive is invigorating.

When moving or processing data you want to look for a situation where you have your data in the cloud under your own control. The ability to choose is the big differentiator over what the big names are offering. A modern digital workplace solution lets you place it (in the cloud) under your control to ensure the protection and portability of your data.

You are organising an event about the digital workplace?

After some time we are organising again our Digital Workplace Day event. It takes place on September 8th in Stockholm, Sweden. Because it is a hybrid event you can either physically attend or watch the event live stream. All of the talks and sessions will be in English and you have the option to remotely participate in discussions and to submit your questions.

The event shares the experiences around the digital workplace and demonstrates how other organisations are using the software. The event aims to offer corporate and government organisations a learning experience about the digital workplace. We welcome everyone to join us at this event and contribute to the learning experience.

At Digital Workplace Day our Nextcloud experts on the ground in Stockholm will present the latest version of Nextcloud. We will also host a dedicated Nextcloud track where we present and discuss specific examples of Nextcloud use within the public sector.

The post Learning Bytes and Behaviours at the Digital Workplace Day appeared first on Nextcloud.