ownCloud Launches Commercial Offering with Easy-to-Use Desktop Clients and Mobile Apps

SOURCE: ownCloud

ownCloud 2012 file sync and share builds on popular open source project to bring security and flexibility to business data sharing

Boston, MA – April 3, 2012 – ownCloud Inc., the commercial entity behind the popular open source enterprise file sync and share project, today launched commercial offerings based on Version 3 of the community edition, bringing business-class flexibility and security to the file sync and share market.

ownCloud 2012 Business and Enterprise editions include anytime, any device access to files – introducing sync clients for Linux and Windows, as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS. The commercial offerings also extend the capabilities of the community edition by adding easier management, support and maintenance subscriptions, plug-ins and commercial licenses.

With more than 400,000 users (and growing rapidly) of the community edition, ownCloud offers the ease-of-use of Dropbox with more flexibility and security. ownCloud users can run their own file sync and share services on their own hardware and storage, use popular public hosting and storage offerings, or both. Because it’s open source, ownCloud offers no vendor lock in, and pulls in innovative features from the community.

“For more than two years now, ownCloud has been giving corporate IT managers the ability to offer their users easy – and secure – access to corporate data, while leveraging their existing infrastructure as the back end,” said Markus Rex, founder and CEO, ownCloud. “These new offerings give end users easy-to-use sync clients and mobile apps, and give IT commercial support.”

“File synchronization across desktops and mobile devices of individual users and groups is a white-hot market. It is also a market that epitomizes the ‘consumerization of IT’ in the enterprise. Adoption of iPads and other devices happened faster – and often by an organization’s most senior executives – than IT was prepared for, and, in many cases, IT hasn’t been able to meet end-user requirements to make these devices truly usable for work,” said Simon Robinson, research director at 451 Research. “Hence, the Mobile File Sharing and Synch Platforms market is shaping up to be an incredibly active and extremely disruptive one in the foreseeable future as IT finds solutions that give users what they want, while at the same time securing corporate data.”

About ownCloud Business and ownCloud Enterprise

ownCloud Business extends the core ownCloud Community 3 infrastructure and adds maintenance and support, an AGPL license, support for open source plug-ins.

ownCloud Enterprise adds an ownCloud commercial license, a management console for easy deployment and management and enablement of commercial plug-ins.

Availability and pricing

Both ownCloud Business and ownCloud Enterprise are available now. Pricing for ownCloud Business starts at $999 a year ($100 a month) for up to 50 users. ownCloud Enterprise starts at $15,000 a year (or $1,500 a month) for up to 250 users.

ownCloud is also available through partners around the world. Last week, the company announced a partner program that drew more than a dozen premium partners.

About ownCloud Community Edition

ownCloud Version 3 enables users to share files and folders from their privately controlled infrastructure. Major new features in this release include: the ownCloud application store, which allows users to take advantage of the extensibility of ownCloud; and, directly edit text file capabilities from a browser. ownCloud is the only technology to offer such functionality made possible by its open and modular nature.

ownCloud began at a KDE community event in 2010, aiming to bring greater flexibility, access and security to data in the cloud. ownCloud enables universal access to files through the widely implemented WebDAV standard, providing a platform to easily view and sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across devices while supporting sharing, viewing and editing via the web interface. Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple, powerful API for applications. For more information, please visit: http://www.owncloud.org.

About ownCloud Inc.

Based on the popular ownCloud open source community project, ownCloud Inc. was founded in 2011 to bring greater flexibility, access and security to unstructured data in enterprises. Company headquarters are in Boston, with European headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, visit: http://www.owncloud.com.