Your data. Your infrastructure. Your rules.

Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint and Dropbox are excellent products. They are also systems where your business data lives on someone else's servers, processed by someone else's infrastructure, subject to someone else's terms of service and accessible to someone else's support staff. For many organisations - regulated businesses, those with sensitive IP, those with GDPR obligations around data location, or simply those who believe their data belongs to them - that is not acceptable. Nextcloud is the open source private cloud platform that gives you everything you expect from a modern cloud collaboration suite, hosted on infrastructure you control and managed by Node.

What Nextcloud is

Nextcloud is the world's most widely deployed self-hosted file sync and collaboration platform. It provides file storage and synchronisation, real-time collaborative document editing, calendar and contact management, video conferencing, project management, and a comprehensive app ecosystem - all running on your own infrastructure, under your own control.

Nextcloud is trusted by over 400,000 organisations worldwide, including the German federal government, which migrated 300,000 employees onto Nextcloud Hub, Siemens, and healthcare systems across Europe that require strict data residency compliance. It is not a compromise or a second-best option - it is the platform that organisations with the highest data sovereignty requirements choose precisely because it gives them the capability of commercial cloud productivity suites without surrendering control of their data.

Node deploys, configures and operates Nextcloud as a fully managed private cloud service. You get the platform, the collaboration tools and the reliability of a managed service. Your data stays on infrastructure you own or control, in the location you specify.

File storage and synchronisation

The core of Nextcloud is a file platform that works exactly as your team expects - from any device, in any location.

Desktop sync clients - native sync clients for Windows, macOS and Linux keep local folders synchronised with your Nextcloud instance in real time. Files changed on one device are available on all others within seconds. The sync client works in the background without requiring any manual intervention.

Mobile apps - iOS and Android apps provide full access to files from any device, with offline access for files and folders you mark for local availability. Documents, photos, videos and any other file type are accessible and manageable from mobile without needing to email attachments to yourself.

Web interface - the full Nextcloud interface is accessible from any browser. Upload, download, preview, share and manage files without installing any client software. The web interface is fast, responsive and works on any device.

WebDAV, SMB and FTP access - for legacy systems and applications that need to access files programmatically, Nextcloud exposes standard protocols. Map Nextcloud as a network drive in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder. Integrate automated workflows that push or pull files without any Nextcloud-specific API integration.

Selective sync and virtual files - users choose which folders sync locally, keeping device storage manageable. Virtual file support shows remote files without downloading them until needed, making it practical to access very large file libraries from devices with limited storage.

Collaboration and document editing

Nextcloud integrates with Collabora Online (the open source version of LibreOffice) to provide real-time collaborative document editing directly in the browser - the same capability as Google Docs, but running entirely on your infrastructure.

Collaborative editing - multiple users edit the same document simultaneously with real-time cursor tracking and change visibility. Word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations all support collaborative editing. Changes are tracked, versions are automatically saved, and the full revision history is preserved.

Office compatibility - documents are stored in standard Office Open XML formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx), maintaining full compatibility with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. There is no format conversion, no compatibility loss and no vendor-specific file formats.

Comments and mentions - users comment on documents and files with @mentions that trigger notifications, making document review workflows natural and keeping discussions attached to the files they refer to.

Nextcloud Talk - built-in video conferencing, screen sharing and team chat, all running on your infrastructure. Team conversations, one-to-one calls and group video meetings happen without any data transiting third-party communication platforms.

File sharing in Nextcloud is precise and auditable. You know exactly who has access to what, and every access event is logged.

Internal sharing - share files and folders with individual users or groups, with configurable permissions: view only, download, edit, reshare. Permissions are enforced at the server level, not just the UI level.

External sharing - generate share links for people outside your organisation with optional password protection, expiry dates and download restrictions. Recipients access files through a browser without needing a Nextcloud account. You control whether they can download, view only, or edit.

Federated sharing - share files directly with users on other Nextcloud instances without moving the data. A client running their own Nextcloud can access a shared folder from your instance seamlessly, with files remaining on your infrastructure.

Granular permissions with file access control - advanced access control rules restrict file access based on user group membership, time of day, IP address range, or device trust status. Sensitive folders can be configured to require MFA before access, block downloads to unmanaged devices, or prevent access outside office hours.

Audit logging - every file access, download, share creation, permission change and administrative action is logged with timestamp, user identity and IP address. Your compliance team has a complete, exportable audit trail without needing to query server logs.

Keycloak integration and enterprise identity

For organisations running Keycloak for identity and access management, Nextcloud integrates as a standard OpenID Connect application. Users authenticate with their existing corporate credentials - no separate Nextcloud passwords, no separate user directory to maintain.

Single sign-on - users access Nextcloud with the same credentials they use for every other application in the Keycloak-managed estate. Session management, MFA requirements and conditional access policies are enforced by Keycloak, consistently, across every application.

Group synchronisation - Keycloak groups are synchronised into Nextcloud, driving folder access permissions automatically. A user added to the Finance team in Keycloak gains access to the Finance folder in Nextcloud without any manual permission grant.

Entra ID and Google Workspace - for organisations not running Keycloak, Nextcloud federates directly with Microsoft Entra ID and Google Workspace, allowing employees to sign in with their Microsoft or Google corporate credentials.

This is the reason many organisations choose Nextcloud over commercial alternatives. Your data location is a configuration decision you make, not a policy you accept from a vendor.

Defined data location - we deploy Nextcloud in the specific data centre, cloud region or on-premise environment you specify. UK organisations that require data to remain in the UK can have it hosted on UK infrastructure. Organisations with EU data residency requirements can have it hosted within the EU. Organisations with air-gap requirements can have it deployed on-premise with no internet connectivity.

No data processing by third parties - files stored in Nextcloud are not processed by AI training systems, not analysed for advertising purposes, not accessible to the platform vendor's support staff. The only people who can access your data are the people you authorise.

GDPR technical controls - Nextcloud supports right to erasure (complete user data deletion), data minimisation (retention policies and automated deletion), access logging for data subject access requests, and encryption at rest and in transit. We configure these controls to match your specific GDPR obligations.

Data processor agreement - Node acts as a data processor under GDPR for the personal data stored in your Nextcloud instance. We provide the data processor agreement your DPO requires, with appropriate technical and organisational measures documented.

Managed by Node - deployed on your terms

We handle the deployment, configuration, ongoing maintenance, security patching, backups and monitoring. You consume a fully operational private cloud platform without managing the infrastructure underneath it.

Our infrastructure - hosted on Node's own high-availability UK infrastructure with SLA-backed uptime, proactive monitoring, daily encrypted backups and 24/7 incident response. Your data stays in the UK.

Your cloud tenancy - deployed into your AWS, Azure or GCP account in the region you specify, using managed Kubernetes and cloud-native storage backends. You own the infrastructure; we operate it.

On-premise - deployed onto your own hardware, your own virtualisation platform, or your own colocation facility. For organisations with air-gap requirements or strict data sovereignty obligations, this provides complete control over the data environment.

High availability - production Nextcloud deployments run across multiple application nodes with shared storage, load balancing and automatic failover. A single node failure causes no interruption. Database and storage backends run with replication and automated failover.

Why self-hosted cloud is the right choice for some organisations - commercial cloud storage is convenient, affordable and mature. For most personal and many business use cases, it is entirely appropriate. But for organisations handling sensitive client data, commercially sensitive IP, regulated personal data or classified information, the question of where that data physically resides and who can access it is not a preference - it is a compliance requirement and a fiduciary obligation. Nextcloud, deployed and managed by Node on infrastructure you control, answers that question definitively: your data is here, on this infrastructure, accessible only to these people. For the organisations that need that answer, no commercial alternative provides it.