Latest ownCloud Community Edition, Free Alternative to “Roll Their Own” Dropbox

ownCloud Community announced its latest community edition, giving users a flexible, customizable and secure way to host their own cloud file sync and share.

Built with the support of the ownCloud community, the latest ownCloud community edition includes:

• deleted Files app – so users can restore accidently deleted files and folders;
• improved apps management – so third-party apps can be easily installed from the central apps repository (apps.owncloud.com) and automatically removed from the server if disabled; and
• refreshed design – to improve usability and differentiate main navigation from in-app navigation; and more.

Unlike Dropbox and other commercial sync and share apps, which store data in the cloud in remote, third-party data centers, ownCloud is deployed on-premise, seamlessly integrating with existing security, storage, monitoring and reporting tools. With more than 750,000 users worldwide, ownCloud offers the ease-of-use, flexibility, sophistication and security not available from basic syncing apps and third-party storage.
 
"Another great effort by the community and ownCloud employees has produced a fantastically feature-rich, quality ownCloud edition," said Frank Karlitschek, founder and CTO, ownCloud. "The ownCloud project has always been about providing people with the easiest, safest way to sync their files across multiple devices and share them with friends, family and colleagues. This latest effort adds and improves some great features, while enhancing quality and user experience."

Latest ownCloud Community features

Usability – design improvements, new features and advanced documentation make ownCloud easier to install, manage and use:

• New design: View content in a simplified and redesigned interface, with the main web navigation panel now clearly differentiated from in-app navigations. Settings and log-out are combined into a single user menu — which also now shows the currently logged-in user. Settings are further simplified and app-specific settings are moved from personal settings into the appropriate apps.
• Deleted files: Restore accidently deleted files and folders and manually delete sensitive files, while the system now automatically cleans up older files depending on age and used space.
• New search engine: Find files stored by name – and now by content – with a new Lucene-based full text search engine app.
• New antivirus: Scan uploaded files using Clam AV, preventing the potential for automated distribution of infected files. Users can choose to automatically delete, report and/or log any infected files.
• Display name: Create display names for users and administrators, simplifying the collaborative experience. In the interface and share dialog, display names are now shown instead of the login names – easier to understand for users and can be changed by the admin.
• Rewritten photo gallery: Access and share photos with friends and family with an improved and streamlined user interface – which also includes a slideshow feature.
• Improved contacts: Access friends, coworkers and family in an enhanced interface, with contacts now organized by groups (categories) instead of address books. The main view shows an overview of the most important fields and the amount of information adjusts automatically depending on the size of the browser window or device. The web interface is now written entirely in JavaScript – resulting in a more responsive user experience.
• Improved calendar: Mark events as confidential or public easily with a simplified user interface that gives users more control – including support for classes.
• Improved bookmarks: Create, find and use bookmarks faster with filter navigation, a ‘read later’ button for the browser toolbar, and many more enhancements that make getting to bookmarked content faster and easier.
• New documentation: Get help faster through completely new user, admin and developer documentation. The user and administrator documentation is shipped with ownCloud and available in the help menu. The developer documentation is available online.

Performance: enhanced scaling, better storage management, improved code security and storage encryption make ownCloud faster and more secure:

• Improved file cache: Mix and match storage to create a hybrid cloud to take advantage of the newly refactored file system abstraction, including more flexibility and greater performance (up to 500% faster). Optional externally mounted file systems like Google Drive, Dropbox, FTP and others are scanned on-demand and in the background to increase performance. Support for SFTP external file systems is added.
• Improved syncing of Desktop Client: Sync faster with dramatically improved sync performance between the desktop clients due to reduced server overhead communications.
• Security: Reduce the risk of harmful actions with updated app-level protection via CSRF protection checks, and forbidden inline JavaScript (XSS protection).
• Improved versioning: Automatically manage versions on the server, expiring old versions when users run out of quota. A new intelligent algorithm keeps revisions every 2s for the first 10s, every 10s for the next minute, every minute for the next hour, every hour for the next 24 hours, and one revision per day until running out of space or quota.
• Encryption: Encrypt at rest with the newly designed server-side encryption application, to be delivered in a later maintenance release in April 2013. Users currently taking advantage of ownCloud’s server-side encryption should continue to use the current ownCloud implementation until then.

Integration: greater connectivity to more storage back ends, additional user directories, and a new API make ownCloud easier to integrate into an enterprise environment

• Enhanced external storage app: Increase performance of integrated secondary storage, including Dropbox, Swift, FTP, Google Docs, S3, WebDAV and external ownCloud servers, with a faster, more efficient and easier external storage app. This is the fastest way to a personal hybrid cloud.
• Improved LDAP: Support large scale deployments, and handle more users faster, by integrating multiple LDAP and AD instances. Administrators can now search LDAP and AD directories in configurable attributes, not only in the ownCloud user name. Multiple User/Group bases can be configured in the LDAP backend. LDAP backend supports paged results for better performance if the server offers it (requires PHP 5.4).
• New REST API: Access and control ownCloud remotely from external systems with the new standards-based open interface. A new Open Collaboration Services (OCS)-based REST API is added: supporting the newly released OCS 1.7 spec.
• Improved apps management: Easily install third-party apps from the central apps repository (apps.owncloud.com) and automatically remove from the server if disabled. If a new version of a third-party app is published, an update button appears and the app and can be easily updated with just one click. Recommended apps are shown in the apps list with a "recommended" label so that users can easily find high quality apps.

Other usability and performance improvements:

• Faster and more compatible web-based PDF Viewer
• Improved media player for listening to streaming media files
• New file size and progress bars at work during downloads; Improved overall performance.

ownCloud Community gives technical users a free, secure and innovative way to sync and share data. ownCloud, Inc., the company behind ownCloud, will launch a commercially-supported enterprise edition of ownCloud in the second quarter, targeting enterprise IT departments that require on-premise file sync and share for sensitive corporate data.