Reaching For The Cloud

Cloud is everywhere, and not just in the sky. The last few years have seen an explosion in cloud services such as Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers and Cloud hosting offered by VPS.net.
The term seems to have come from almost nowhere to mean anything from clustered computing to off-site backup.  For many, cloud has become synonymous with services such as Dropbox’s file sharing or Google’s online Apps service.  With the shift in how people use computing facilities caused by mass smartphone ownership alongside traditional PCs, tablets and laptops, it has become a natural requirement to access files from any of these devices without concern over how to get the files from one machine to another while keeping all the versions in sync.  Numerous services have stepped in to fill this void albeit at a price, whether that is monetary or privacy with your data being scraped to target advertisements at you.
Into this mix steps ownCloud, a free open-source software package that attempts to replace the various proprietary file hosting services like Dropbox.  Unlike these various services, ownCloud consists of a server package that you can install on your own server, whether that’s a dedicated server in a datacentre, a VPS or even just an old computer connected to your home network.  The server-side software can be installed on Windows or Linux, and acts as a web application.  Client software exists for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS and Android to automatically synchronise folders on your file system out to your ownCloud server, in addition to being able to use a web browser to interface with the ownCloud server.
So what advantage does ownCloud really give you that is worth the hassle of setting up your own?  Firstly, there’s the reassurance that you know exactly how secure the service is as you control the security of the server.  The recent iCloud hackings – and in the past a Dropbox security breach – have shown that these services aren’t infallible and, as large targets, are likely to draw more malicious interest.  In addition, ownCloud goes beyond simple file sharing by sharing calendars between devices and allowing modification directly through the web browser.  Collaborative document editing can be done (on Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer files) directly in the web browser, allowing up to 5 people to work on the same file simultaneously.  Contacts and address books can be synchronised across various devices ensuring that you don’t lose those important details.  Various media files, such as videos and music, can be viewed if the browser has the appropriate plugins, PDF files can be viewed in browser without any additional plugins and images can also be viewed in the form of a gallery.  A very handy feature is ownCloud’s versioning and undeleting feature. This allows you to recover older versions of files after you have made changes to them or recover files you have deleted.
Something that is generally unusual is that ownCloud doesn’t lock you into the single service.  If you still want to use Dropbox or another similar service you can use them as storage spaces within ownCloud, with ownCloud optionally encrypting data being stored on the external services.  There are also additional applications that can be installed on the ownCloud instance to give you further functionality if required from a number of third parties.  OwnCloud is not just for you though; it provides comprehensive user accounting to enable you to share your ownCloud service with whomever you like.
If you like the idea of bringing your cloud file storage under your own control then ownCloud could well be the solution for you.  The system requirements are fairly low meaning that even a Raspberry Pi can be used as an ownCloud server if required.  Packages are available in the repositories for the major Linux distributions as well as an installer for Windows.  So if you find yourself with spare storage on your server then an ownCloud solution could fit in nicely.