Starline dispenses with the cloud giants
A point of view on our own behalf
But as a company, we also live this ethos of data sovereignty and completely avoid using services from the cloud giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft. On the hardware side, this is made possible by a sophisticated redundant server and storage environment, which we will be looking at in a future article.
Here, I would like to discuss what our software stack looks like, which enables us to work with all modern tools without falling into the clutches of the aforementioned data octopuses. In doing so, we hope to encourage others to take a look. After all, a great user experience is also possible with self-hosted software, often from the open source sector.
We only have two systems that we do not host ourselves:
- The software for our personnel administration. Here we rely on Personio, as this was the only solution that offered us the full scope we needed. Personio itself is hosted by Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, in compliance with the GDPR, but this is still a thorn in our side.
- The software for our video conferences and webinars: Here we rely on GoTo Meeting and GoTo Webinar, as GoTo is GDPR-compliant. Unfortunately, self-hosted solutions proved to be unusable as soon as the video conferences had more than 10 participants.
We would be very happy to receive suggestions on how we could also avoid these two cloud services.
But now to our self-hosted software stack, which is located in our own VPN (Virtual Private Network) with the exceptions mentioned below:
Communication:
Email and calendar: We use Kerio Connect here. Most employees use a paid version of Microsoft Outlook as their local mail client, not the subscription version and not the free or spyware version (see Heise article "Microsoft claws access data: Beware of the new Outlook"). However, other e-mail and calendar programmes can also be used without any problems, e.g. the Apple Calendar and Mail programmes on iPads or iPhones.
Telephone system: Here we use Swyx OnPremise, a VOIP system from Deutsche Telekom, which offers us all the conveniences of VOIP telephony: Conference rooms, interconnection of calls, use on mobile devices and much more.
Enterprise resource planning:
The centrepiece of our company is of course our ERP system, which we not only host ourselves but also adapt to our processes. For mobile working, we allow access via remote desktop, which works smoothly (and is certainly faster than many "modern" ERP systems with their web-based user interfaces).
Collaboration:
Chat: We use a locally created community version of Mattermost for internal communication.
Document collaboration: We use OnlyOffice to work together on documents and presentations. The documents are stored in our own NextCloud instance.
File sharing: We use NextCloud to share documents internally and to ensure versioning (partly in conjunction with OnlyOffice). To share documents with customers, we have another NextCloud instance that is publicly accessible without a VPN. We can also provide firmware for customers there or enable customers to upload large log files in encrypted form.
Project management: We use ActiveCollab as project management software to enable internal collaboration and collaboration with external service providers. This is self-hosted in a DMZ so that external service providers can also have access.
Knowledge database: We use a wiki to make our knowledge usable and searchable. We are currently using MediaWiki. However, we are currently evaluating the MediaWiki-based BlueSpice to improve user-friendliness and add a few more features. (Again, we welcome your suggestions and comments).
Conclusion:
With this software stack, we enable user-friendly working both in the office and on the move. In doing so, we completely dispense with the top dogs that are often presented as having no alternative, which not only have at least questionable data protection practices themselves, but are also always targets for cyber attacks.
Your advantages with Starline
We do not hoard data. When we store data, we limit it to what is necessary to provide a good visitor experience.
Data security is our business. This also applies to your user data. Therefore, everything remains on our servers.
We do not deliver solutions "off the shelf". All servers and storage systems designed by us are assembled by hand.
Our long-standing business relationships prove our loyalty to customers and suppliers.
