Announcing Cloud68 – reclaim your data with open source instances.
Online Collaboration tools are proven to have a great added value on increasing team productivity, optimizing business processes and of course efficiency. This is hardly a matter of discussion any longer and businesses and professionals have been using many of these tools to help them work better. Various platforms such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft OneDrive etc have become quite popular. Most of these tools usually come for free, or, well at least you don’t pay them with your money. But, as it is already known, these “free” services are much more expensive that most people realize.
Fortunately, Data Privacy is quite a hot topic at the moment, and more people, companies, organizations and institutions all over the world are raising serious concerns about the importance of the integrity of their information. On the other hand, while most of individual users and companies/organizations still go for the “free” tiers, many of us who have some basic technical know-how, still care about our privacy and where our data goes. There are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who want to stay focused on their business operations while having their productive and privacy oriented tech infrastructure up and running.
To answer the increasing demand for services that respect data integrity, Collective68, a team of open source professionals who have been consistently vocal on the issues of Online Privacy and Free Libre Open Source Software, have just launched Cloud68 – the ready2use cloud infrastructure that enables individuals and SMEs to stay in control while working with cutting edge technologies through open source software.
No technical skills are needed – you sign up and choose your instance(s) of choice and nerdy ‘tech ninjas’ in love with open source software take care of the rest, including software updates, server management and even training sessions on how to get the max out of your FLOSS software of choice and how to move from the tech giants that abuse our privacy. Individuals, companies and organisations will have a variety of open source platforms to choose from, starting with Nextcloud, Mattermost, Gitlab and Ghost to mention a few.
“We need to wake up from the passive role we are used to in regards to our privacy and take our data back! We have been talking theoretically about this for years, but making non tech savvy people switch to open source cloud software it was not an easy task”, says Redon Skikuli, one of the co-founders of the initiative. “We are proud to make the process of hosting data securely using open source instances really easy”, he ads.
What makes Cloud68 different?
The goal of Cloud68 is to enable you stay in control of YOUR data. The service includes only open source instances whose code is publicly available and trustworthy in terms of data privacy. The service is provided with friendly support and that’s why before launching Cloud68 the team spent months improving the support life-cycle. The combination of privacy focused cloud software, deep knowledge of open source technologies, friendly support and an ‘ethics first’ mentality is what Cloud68 claims to be the recipe that differentiates the team from other proprietary cloud initiatives.
The team states that they are also testing the waters on launching the Community Support Program soon, which will provide discounts or full support for independent professionals, activists or NGOs who are working on internet freedom or similar social challenges we as a society are facing these days.
Last but not least, since this is a recently launched service by Collective68, the team invites you to share your thoughts and give feedback through their public chat, email, Twitter and soon on Mastodon.
In times where personal data is being sold for profit, where people are being treated like simple numbers by AI algorithms, where ethics is just one more word and where and big tech is converting online privacy into a myth, open source software can come to a rescue. Time to fight back one ‘easy to use FLOSS alternative’ at the time.
For more information about Cloud68 feel free to visit: https://cloud68.co/