Digital Sovereignty — Why We Moved to NextCloud

Digital Sovereignty — Why We Moved to NextCloud

Giving away control doesn’t sit easily with me.

Once upon a time, we used to buy things and own them. A car, a tractor, a piece of software, furniture, IT equipment, a house. It might not be the newest, or the best, but you owned it — it was yours.

Increasingly, though, everything’s “as a service”. Pay monthly used to be a convenience — but often, there’s no alternative.

Without a subscription, bits of your car stop working. The housebuilder kept the freehold, so you’re paying to live in the house you bought. You can’t choose to run Office 2000 for a bit longer (yes, I’m that old) because Office 365 doesn’t have a “keep using the older version” option — you pay monthly. You can’t keep using it — and definitely can’t fix it — if you don’t keep paying.

Leaving aside cost, the big issue for me is the loss of control. I’m not a digital Luddite — I have as many subscriptions as the next person — but when I feel trapped, it’s time to look for a way to break free, even if I choose not to take it.

Digital Control

File storage is a big one for me. I was a fairly early adopter of DropBox, and have been using it for well over a decade. Through acquisition, I’ve inherited some GDrives. Then of course, the ubiquitous Microsoft Office brings several OneDrives and a few SharePoint sites.

Consolidating file storage is hard. I can copy my data out, but what about version history? What about deleted files? What if something REALLY important is just below the surface, and in cancelling my subscription, I lose access forever? I’ve made a few failed bids to rationalise cloud storage accounts, and more than once re-enabled a service I thought I’d broken free of, to see if I can track down and rescue that one missing file.

Control is an issue at the individual level, but data sovereignty at the global level is becoming an increasingly hot topic. I was inspired to see the German state of Schleswig-Holstein migrating away from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to open source email. Privacy was a significant concern, and this represents part of a wider strategy for Schleswig-Holstein. Tech companies are not entirely neutral actors — for example, earlier this year Microsoft blocked the International Criminal Court’s access to email under pressure from the US Government.

How much access and control do we want to give multinational, usually US-parented, companies over our data?

And then, there’s AI. Do I trust the companies holding my data not to use it to train their AI models? If they do so, will that help my competitors or harm me? Am I inadvertently breaching privacy laws if my tech supplier uses my customers’ data to train an AI model?

So, when I was looking at streamlining some business processes, I decided to revisit open source alternatives to cloud file storage services.

Enter NextCloud

NextCloud describes itself as an “open source content collaboration platform”. At its heart is a file hosting platform — Dropbox or OneDrive, if you like. It’s open source, licensed under the GNU AGPL, and can be hosted on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a globally distributed hosting service.

That flexibility was exactly what I was looking for. Hosted options exist, but I wanted something that I could deploy, rebuild, and move at will — without depending on anyone else’s business model or policy changes.

In addition to the core system, there’s a rich ecosystem of apps — many of which are free and open source. These range from simple add-ons — such as adding custom properties to files — through comprehensive Zoom- or Teams-like collaboration (Talk) or shift rostering (Shifts Next). And, because it’s open source, we can create new apps to meet our needs in familiar technologies such as PHP and Vue.js.

NextCloud, therefore, gives us the flexibility to collaborate on documents, whilst being in control of our own data and environment. And whilst we’ve chosen to host on AWS, encryption features are included, meaning that although our data sits on someone else’s servers, we’re the only ones who can access that data — it’s under our control, and firmly within our geographic borders.

Digital Sovereignty in Practice

For us, this isn’t just about technology — it’s about sovereignty.
Data sovereignty means every file, backup, and log stays within EU/UK AWS regions, under our control.
Digital sovereignty goes a step further — it means the system itself is ours. We decide how it’s deployed, where it lives, and who can touch it.

If we ever wanted to move away from AWS entirely, we could. Everything from infrastructure to configuration is portable, open, and documented. That independence is worth a lot — not just for compliance, but for peace of mind.

The Bigger Picture

We live in an age where convenience often means compromise. The “cloud” has given us incredible tools, but also made us quietly dependent on companies with opaque policies and shifting priorities.

Running Nextcloud this way isn’t about rejecting the cloud — it’s about reclaiming it. We get the benefits of scalability and reliability, but with the transparency, portability, and control that used to come with owning your own infrastructure.

Whilst this was a change we made internally, to consolidate a platform for our future growth, it’s not just about us. I’ve been involved in developing bespoke software for more than 2 decades, which we continue as Sett. When you commission bespoke software, you negotiate the terms you’re comfortable with, under a license that balances the control you need with the responsibility you want to outsource. If you want total control of the software tools which drive your business, that’s where we come in.

Open source platforms like NextCloud let us offer that same philosophy at a lower cost. If you’re exploring Nextcloud — whether to regain control of your company’s data, reduce dependency on third-party platforms, or simply bring file sharing and collaboration back under your own roof — we can help. From guidance on the solution, through architecture and deployment to the cloud or in house, to integration, customisation and long-term management, we offer Nextcloud hosting and implementation services designed to give you all the advantages of the cloud, without surrendering ownership.

Reclaiming the cloud is not the easiest path — but it’s the one that ensures we, and our clients, stay in control of our digital future.

If you’re starting to feel that same loss of control — that quiet dependency on platforms you don’t own — maybe it’s time to explore what digital sovereignty could look like for you.

We’d love to help you take that step.

In case you’ve got this far and are still wondering who I am and why I’m writing, find out a bit more about me here.

I’ve been a software engineer for a couple of decades, and head up all things software and solutions at Sett, as well as PatronBase UK & Ireland. I take a far broader view of software engineering than writing code — my career started in business improvements / business change, and I’m proud to see my role as solution architecture. I’m late diagnosed as autistic, and proud to have a divergent-led workplace.

A limited amount of my time is available for consultancy or architecture through Sett, where my wider team is available for greenfield or legacy bespoke software projects either taking the lead or as part of a larger team.

As well as software, you can also find me talking about autism and being autistic, marketing, CRM, business change, making and fixing things, gardening and much more. Welcome to my brain dump.