AARNet (Australia’s Academic and Research Network), is co-developing ownCloud Infinite Scale and will be the first organisation to use it in the field.

“With the new architecture, we look forward to a stronger integration of ownCloud into our storage, as well as a very efficient handling of files and shared data. This will provide improved file-based collaboration and support the current and future needs of our research and education community. With more than 60,000 users, our ‘CloudStor’ implementation of ownCloud is a tremendously successful solution. With a data growth of more than 100% per year we demand and expect extremely high scalability and operational efficiency. We have developed the belief that this next-generation approach is the right technology choice,” commented David Wilde, CTO of AARNet.

Infinite Scale is the result of combining several promising ownCloud community projects: The web-based user interface “Phoenix”, the next generation storage engine “Reva” and additional new developments to meet modern scalability requirements. Important components and know-how of the new architecture were designed in tight collaboration and conjunction with members of the ownCloud Foundation.

Infinite Scale sees the introduction of gRPC based high-performance cloud-native microservices which handle connections to storage and to the pluggable app framework. The cloud-native microservices, utilizing latest proven technologies, will ensure a modular, scaleable and robust foundation for the ownCloud Infinite Scale architecture while providing stability in current and legacy APIs.

ownCloud X, the current ownCloud generation with 10.1 as the latest version, will continue to receive new features and full support for the future. As a long-term supported release, it comes with a support guarantee until 2020 and an extended support window afterwards.

The new ownCloud architecture leverages the most modern technologies in the IT industry, using the Go Language and the new vue.js based ownCloud Phoenix front-end, combined with S3 Object Storage, SMB Storage or EOS and authentication via Open ID Connect. It represents a new base architecture for storage, metadata or any kind of content collaboration add-ons.

ownCloud Infinite Scale is developed using an Apache 2.0 license. It is expected to be available to selected customers by the end of 2019, followed by general availability during 2020.

How to get involved

Interested developers can find all essential information in the ownCloud “nexus” repository on GitHub in order to follow the development of the new architecture and to get actively involved: https://github.com/owncloud/nexus

Read the original media release on the OwnCloud website