Cloud It Yourself

Cozy

French startup Cozy Cloud offers Cozy [3], another client-server product with a focus on a fully configurable web interface (Figure 2). Written in Python, the suite uses the document-oriented NoSQL database CouchDB as its back end. Cozy can also be installed on less powerful hardware, for example, Raspberry Pi machines or systems with little RAM. However, you can expect some compromises in terms of installable services, which – as usual – are known as apps here.

Figure 2: Cozy is also customizable to your own requirements thanks to apps.

In addition to the file applications for accessing online files, you can find applications for calendars, contacts, and photo management, as well as various apps supplied by the community. One thing worthy of note is that, besides installation and upgrade instructions, the website also offers detailed uninstall instructions, in case a user happens to find Cozy less than all that.

Not a Multiuser Cloud

In the strictest sense of the word, Cozy really is your own cloud; although you can manage and share your own data with external users, the solution currently only allows one user per Cozy. Additionally, no option currently exists for integrating other Cozies to create what are known as "Federations."

The user can access the data with WebDAV clients via the Cozy Sync App. An Android client can be found in the Playstore. Desktop clients are a work in progress according to the Cozy forum.

Even though many other elements are still in flux in this project, the development team has obviously done enough to convince affluent investors of the quality of its work and thus put the project on a solid financial basis [4].

Conclusions: The promising technical approach and obviously secure funding are reason enough to keep an eye on Cozy, even if its standards are still currently not in line with your requirements.

Filr

After handing over iFolder to the Kablink community, Novell has relied on Filr [5] for a secure exchange of data since the end of 2012. Differences of opinion exist regarding its participation in the test; the critical motivation for saying yes was ultimately that it runs on both Windows servers and Novell OES 11, which in turn is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Novell Filr supports a variety of platforms for synchronization clients.

Filr is tailored for use in the enterprise, which Novell apparently understands to be mainly customers with SLES, OES, or Windows infrastructure. The product is available as a virtualized appliance on VMware, Hyper-V, or the Xen implementation of SLES 11 as of SP2.

Although the documentation only refers to Windows Active Directory and Novell E-directory as the supported directory services (to match the target group), Open LDAP integration should be also possible.