ownCloud, New Start-Up in Open Source File Sharing

Joining the market for secure, manageable and easily accessible and sharable storage, ownCloud, the open source file-sharing project, announced that it has formed a commercial entity founded by former SUSE/Novell executive Markus Rex, who will join the company as CEO and CTO, effective immediately, and Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project.

The company, ownCloud, Inc., already a popular open source project with more than 350,000 users, also announced a funding round lead by Boston-based General Catalyst Partners and the opening of a US headquarters in Boston. Terms of the funding were not disclosed.

ownCloud offers the ease-of-use and cost effectiveness of Dropbox and box.net with a more secure, better managed offering that – because it’s open source — offers greater flexibility and no vendor lock in – for business use. ownCloud users can run file sync and share services on their own hardware and storage or use public hosting and storage offerings.

"With the explosion of unstructured data in the enterprise and increasingly mobile (and unsecure) ways to access it, many companies have been forced to lock down their data – sometimes forcing employees to find less than secure means of access, or, if security is too restrictive, risk having all that unavailable," said John Simon, Managing Director at General Catalyst. "When we saw the ease-of-use, security and flexibility of ownCloud, we were sold."

"In a cloud-oriented world, ownCloud is the only tool based on a ubiquitous open source platform," said Markus Rex, CEO and Founder, ownCloud. "This differentiator enables businesses complete, transparent, compliant control over their data and data storage costs, while also allowing employees simple and easy data access from anywhere."

ownCloud enables universal access to files through a web interface or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to view and sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all devices and enables basic editing right on the web. Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple, but powerful API for applications.

Product and services offerings will be announced in the first quarter of 2012.

Rex was former senior vice president and general manager in charge of SUSE Linux at Novell. He also served as CTO of the Linux Foundation, CTO for Linux at Novell and was SUSE’s first vice president of Engineering.  Markus is a graduate of the Harvard Business School General Management Program.

Karlitschek leads development and the ownCloud Open Source Project and Community.

ownCloud was founded in 2011. Company headquarters are in Boston with an additional development location in Germany.