ownCloud Increases Revenue by 50% in 2017

ownCloud GmbH, provider of open source software for secure file sharing (Enterprise File Sync & Share) increased its revenue by more than 50% compared to the previous year.

The increase was particularly strong in the German-speaking countries, where business volume grew by 100%.

The company sees the increased demand for secure private cloud solutions and the improvement of software quality and service as its main driver.

A total of 244 companies signed new subscription agreements last year, some of them with a term of several years. This brings the number of ownCloud customers to almost 500 worldwide. The development of the installation size, due to increased user numbers from the high level of user-friendliness, is also particularly pleasing. More than 10 new customers signed contracts for more than €100,000 subscription volume. As a result, the company now counts more than 40 installations with over 10,000 users.

The company sees a growing demand for secure private cloud solutions as the main growth driver. Interest is particularly strong in the financial services and technology sectors.

“The past year was characterized by very high growth rates and many prominent new customers. At the same time, we were able to further strengthen the team with 17 new hires over the course of the year,” said Tobias Gerlinger, CEO, satisfied with the course of business. “But also, in other respects, 2017 was a record year for ownCloud: the largest open source file sharing community has grown to more than 200,000 installations and 20 million users worldwide.”

An highlight for ownCloud was the release of a new version of its own software: ownCloud X. Their new modular architecture represents a milestone for the further development of the solution over the next few years. Due to its modularity, new functions and improvements can be made available to users more quickly. This created a basis for future technological innovation.

More Usability and Security
Vulnerabilities such as Spectre and Meltdown repeatedly show that there is no 100% security when sharing resources in the cloud. As a secure alternative to the SaaS offerings, the vendor is profiting from the trend to leave sensitive data in its own data center and use a private cloud solution for file sharing.

The increasing importance of private cloud solutions is also confirmed by independent experts. The market research company, Gartner, lists ownCloud in the current Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (30 page, $1,995) alongside industry leaders such as IBM and Amazon.

“The market proves us right; our focus on user-friendliness and data security has made ownCloud the largest open source provider of file sharing solutions worldwide, by far. In 2017, it paid off that we invested several million euros in software quality and service over the past year and a half, which has enabled us to optimally serve the steadily growing number of large customers with complex requirements. The combination of innovative software and outstanding service is the key to success,” says Holger Dyroff, COO and responsible for product development, ownCloud.

The software could be improved in many places. For example, the integration of user information from the Active Directory Service has been revised, whereby instead of many requests per user for individual attributes, only one single request for updates is now necessary.

With the Ransomware Protection App, a security feature has been developed that protects customers from all blackmail software attacks.

In addition, a large number of customer-specific requirements such as full text search and mapping of security classifications were implemented.

Users Benefit from Community
In the last 12 months, 215 contributors with over 11,000 commits have contributed to the success of ownCloud. A professional community of developers and partners offers company’s users more than 60 additional applications in the firm’s marketplace. These provide features such as collaborative editing of Office documents or notes, collecting sensor data for IoT applications, multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption of files in the ownCloud Web front end, and many others.