Digital sovereignty · Modern Workplace

How dependent is your company on Microsoft? Nextcloud as a sovereign alternative.

Files, documents, email and meetings: Nextcloud brings collaboration together on infrastructure you control. We help you compare features, operational responsibilities and costs with Microsoft 365. The right solution depends on your requirements.

Book an initial assessment20 minutes · no obligation

The starting point

The right questions before choosing a platform

Which applications do you use to read email, edit documents or hold online meetings? For many companies, the answer is Microsoft. Rising licence costs and questions about digital sovereignty make it worth examining alternatives – including their usability and impact on productivity.

How predictable are your licence costs?

Which ongoing expenses should be included in a fair comparison?

How dependent are you on one provider?

How much freedom do you need when choosing infrastructure and software?

Where is your data stored?

Who controls storage locations and access?

Will your team feel at home?

Which workflows must remain easy to use after a change?

What does productive collaboration require?

Which features and integrations does your company actually need?

Who takes responsibility for operations?

How will updates, security and recovery be organised?

The platform

What is Nextcloud?

Nextcloud is an open-source platform for collaboration and communication. It brings everyday tools together under one interface. You can run it on your own infrastructure and control where data is stored and who can access it.

File storage, synchronisation and sharing
Chat, audio and video calls
Shared calendars and contacts
Collaborative editing with Nextcloud Office
Email access through existing mail servers
Tasks, knowledge and notes via apps

Why Nextcloud?

More control, with responsibilities clearly defined

Open source

The software can generally be used without licence fees, hosted on your own infrastructure and adapted to your requirements. Operations still need to be budgeted for.

Enterprise support

Commercial Enterprise offerings provide professional support, maintenance and additional features, depending on the package.

Digital sovereignty

Hosting on your own servers or in a data centre you control gives you authority over data storage and access.

Extensibility

Apps and integrations let you connect the platform to existing workflows and provide the features you need.

The comparison

Can Nextcloud replace Microsoft 365?

Functional equivalents at a glance
Microsoft 365	Nextcloud	Function
OneDrive	Nextcloud Files	Central file storage, sharing and synchronisation across devices
Word / Excel / PowerPoint	Nextcloud Office	Collaborative browser-based editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations
Microsoft Teams	Nextcloud Talk	Chat, audio and video calls with internal and external participants
Outlook (email)	Nextcloud Mail	Email management in an integrated interface connected to existing mail servers
Outlook (calendar/contacts)	Nextcloud Calendar & Contacts	Shared calendars and address books
Microsoft Planner / To Do	Nextcloud Deck & Tasks	Task management, Kanban boards and project organisation
Microsoft Forms	Nextcloud Forms	Surveys, polls and forms
SharePoint	Nextcloud Collectives	Shared knowledge, team wikis and internal documentation
OneNote	Nextcloud Notes	Digital notes synchronised across devices

These are functional equivalents, not identical products. Application integration, Office functionality and advanced Teams features can differ. Nextcloud Mail connects to existing mail servers; it does not replace a mail server. Which solution fits depends on your requirements and workflows. As a Microsoft Solution Partner, we compare both options without a predetermined outcome.

Operations

What needs to be planned?

Running Nextcloud yourself brings responsibility. Your company or IT service provider takes care of the infrastructure, rather than a fully managed cloud service. A realistic comparison must include the full cost of operations.

Maintenance and updatesPlan regular maintenance and software updates.
SecuritySecure the platform and manage access to your data.
MonitoringMonitor availability and the operational health of the platform.
Backup and disaster recoveryPlan data protection and recovery in an emergency.
High availabilityDesign resilience around your operational requirements.
ScalingAllow for growth in users, storage and workloads.
Total costInclude servers, storage, staffing, maintenance and any commercial support in the calculation.

This is exactly where we support you.

For the infrastructure beneath your collaboration platform, see our Proxmox offering. For a broader view of dependencies and moving workloads, see our cloud exit strategy.

The right time

Compare first, then decide

If digital sovereignty, privacy and long-term cost control matter to you, include Nextcloud in your evaluation. Start with the features your teams use, their workflows and the resources available for operations. We help you determine whether a change makes sense.

Your IT, your data, your decision.

Book an initial assessment20 minutes · no obligation

Julius Schlüter, DevOps Engineer — Julius SchlüterDevOps Engineer

About us

Welcome to Contensi

Moataz Elmasry, Managing Director and Enterprise Architect — Moataz ElmasryManaging Director and Enterprise Architect

We see ourselves as an enabler: we guide mid-sized companies on the way to their own data centre and toward open source – technically grounded and without vendor lock-in.

Behind it stands a team of IT specialists and IT architects that forms a shared professional thread across all relevant topics: data centre, security, cloud, DevSecOps and, more recently, artificial intelligence too.

Before we talk about technology, we clarify your requirements: users, existing applications, access, data volumes and operational responsibilities. This provides a basis for comparing costs and deciding whether a change makes sense.