Heinlein Group strengthens the open-source ecosystem in Germany with the founding of the OpenCloud GmbH

Berlin, 22 January 2025 – Today, the Heinlein Group has announced the operational launch of the OpenCloud GmbH. The company was founded in September 2024 to offer secure and GDPR-compliant file management and file sharing solutions at enterprise level. OpenCloud is open source and will be available from the first quarter of 2025, aimed primarily at businesses, the education sector, research organisations, and public authorities. As an open-source software, it will also become available in the future to the wider community and private individuals. The solution can be accessed through partners, who will offer the software as a service (SaaS). Alternatively, it can be operated independently in dedicated data centres (on-premises). This allows organisations to retain full control over their own data - a decisive advantage for organisations in the education, governance, research, and security sectors.

Open Source is key to enabling digital sovereignty

With OpenCloud, the Heinlein Group is expanding its portfolio of digitally sovereign workplace solutions. Together with OpenTalk, an open source video conferencing solution, OpenCloud represents a second pillar of the secure and independent digital infrastructure in Europe that Heinlein is working towards.

OpenCloud is based on the cloud-native open source software „ownCloud Infinite Scale“, which is available under free licences and is now being further developed, enhanced and made more reliable in the spirit of the open source community. OpenCloud offers businesses and public organisations a modern and user-friendly technology for secure collaboration and long-term file management. 

Peer Heinlein, the founder and CEO of the Heinlein Group, explains: „We are proud to have been approached by a whole range of developers with many years of experience, who now contribute their rich expertise to developing a free open-source solution. Shortly after having established the company, we were able to offer a mature product that facilitates excellent file management and real-time collaboration features, to promote digital sovereignty without compromises.“

Success through innovation and collaboration

OpenCloud benefits from partnerships with telecommunication companies, IT service providers, research organisations and other software providers, who all help speed up development. Our initial partnerships have been very successful: For example, the solution now offers seamless Office integration through Collabora, enabling secure collaboration in real time - even with large numbers of users and large amounts of data.

OpenCloud’s aim is to create a scalable, powerful and data protection-compliant alternative to other solutions that currently dominate the market, such as Microsoft SharePoint, Google Drive or Dropbox. At the same time, OpenCloud's migration support, which will be available shortly, will help smooth the transition away from older, PHP-based solutions, which are normally not suited for cloud-native use, towards a modern file management platform that has much better viability in the long-term.

Peer Heinlein points out: „The digital ecosystem in Europe is an essential part of our critical infrastructure and must be treated as such. Businesses and political organisations must be enabled to retain control over their own data and thus, maintain their ability to act in their interests and protect their business secrets. That means a company's data and files should never be carelessly handed over to third parties. In this context, US-based cloud providers are certainly not a suitable choice when it comes to secure data storage. Current political developments also show that the risk of getting tangled up in unwanted dependencies is real and could become a problem of monumental size.“

About OpenCloud

OpenCloud is a powerful open-source solution for file management, file sharing and content collaboration that fulfils the highest demands in terms of usability, performance, stability and scalability. The software can be operated flexibly on-premises or securely accessed as a service through partners. Offering an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, seamless integration, user-independent file management (Spaces) and secure versioning, OpenCloud is ideal for the public sector, educational and research organisations, as well as large enterprises and software providers.

Together with OpenTalk and mailbox.org, OpenCloud is one of three strong technological pillars of the Heinlein Group, who provide secure and digitally sovereign IT infrastructures in Europe.

Find out more at https://opencloud.eu

About the Heinlein Group

The Heinlein Group is based in Berlin and identifies strongly with all matters around digital sovereignty, data protection and open source. Subsuming the Heinlein Support, OpenTalk, mailbox.org, and OpenCloud brands under one umbrella organisation, Heinlein provides innovative solutions for secure communication and IT infrastructure. From video conferencing, over email services to file sharing - the Heinlein Group's products are GDPR-compliant, flexible to use and „Made in Germany“. For over 30 years, businesses and enterprises, public authorities, and educational organisations have put their trust into the Heinlein Group and their expertise in secure communication. Their portfolio of products and services enables maximum control and transparency for users, promotes digital sovereignty, and drives sustainable IT development.