Nextcloud adds Euro-Office to Hub workplace suite, expands AI assistant

MUNICH — Amid trans-Atlantic political and trade tensions, digital sovereignty — once a relatively niche concern — has jumped to the top of the agenda for European organizations wary of their reliance on US technology suppliers. For many, including European Union policy makers, increased use of open source software is a key part of the answer, offering an alternative to proprietary platforms from a handful of large US vendors. That’s the view of Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud, the German software vendor that bills itself as an open-source alternative to software suites from the likes of Microsoft and Google.  Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek speaking at the German software company’s Nextcloud Summit 2026. Nextcloud Karlitschek founded the company in 2016, forking OwnCloud’s open-source file-sharing software. Since then, Nextcloud has expanded its products to include a range of productivity and collaboration tools that organizations can install and run on their own servers or

The European Commission published its tech sovereignty package last week, including the clearest signal yet of its intention to strengthen European cloud sovereignty and reduce its dependence on US hyperscalers. It’s a response to growing concerns among European organizations and regulators about the reliance on US tech firms and legislation such as the US CLOUD Act, which could give US officials access to data — even if it is stored in Europe. But any shift toward local, sovereign cloud providers will necessarily be gradual, analysts, said as the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) proposals leave plenty of room for US providers to continue supplying cloud computing services to European public sector customers. “The direction is right. The execution will be slow,” said Fernando Pereiro, senior director analyst at Gartner. While the Commission has correctly identified areas where the EU is most dependent on foreign providers, delivering on its ambitions is another challenge, he said. S

The Euro-Office open source productivity app suite will be available with the first stable release of the software on June 9.  Euro-Office was unveiled in March with the aim of providing a modern, open source alternative to Microsoft and Google software for European organizations increasingly wary of a dependence on US-based suppliers.  Euro-Office consists of four browser-based applications: a document editor, spreadsheet program, presentation tool, and a PDF editor, with each application enabling collaborative document editing. It supports Microsoft Office file formats DOCX, PPTX and XLSX, as well as Open Document Format (ODF) files such as ODS, ODT and ODP. The software is intended to be integrated into collaboration solutions such as file-sharing platforms, online wikis or project management tools, according to Nextcloud, one of several European organizations involved in the Euro-Office project. Nextcloud will add Euro-Office to its Nextcloud Office next month, where it will be ava