Data sovereignty – enough with all the talk
There is plenty of talk about data sovereignty and taking back control of our basic infrastructure. There are however very few practical examples of how to actually do this. People seem to think it’s very, very hard. To the point even, that some very influential people (https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/dansk-erhvervsliv-i-stort-strategiskifte-vi-maa-sluge-den-kamel) think that running our most basic and critical digital infrastructure is simply too complicated for us Europeans to handle by ourselves, and must be left in the hands of a few very large US corporations.
At Origo we don’t think so. In fact we think that digital infrastructure and the basic services that make us able to to communicate and collaborate with each other, is something that we are perfectly capable of running ourselves. To put a little weight behind that statement, let us walk you through a real-world example.
Recently Origo was given the task of establishing the basic digital infrastructure of a Danish startup in the tech sector. What they initially needed was what pretty much every company needs:
- Mail, calendars, address books
- Chat
- Documents
- CRM
- Internal documentation system
- Video conferences
- IDP system
The startup did not want to go down the standard Microsoft route (too legacy, too expensive, too locked down). They were however very much interested in open source and locally hosted solutions for their basic applications. This is of course what Origo is all about, so after a bit of research we settled on a curated suite of leading open source applications, and put these to work in Origo Cloud. Notably the applications we chose were not only open source, but also, with one exception, maintained by European companies (Rocket.Chat is maintained by a Brazilian company). In our experience and judging from the feedback of companies we have helped, this suite of applications delivers a fundamental user experience that is, in most ways, on-par with or superior to the standard Microsoft suite of similar applications.
The applications
The applications we chose were:
- Carbonio for mail, calendars and address books
- Rocket.Chat for chat
- Rocket.Chat was installed using our standard one-click stack.
- Rocket.Chat is a great self-hosted alternative to Slack or Teams.
- Mobile apps are available for iOS and Android.
- OnlyOffice Docspace for documents
- OnlyOffice Docspace was installed using our standard one-click stack.
- Docspace delivers Microsoft-compatible file and document storage including editing and collaboration services.
- A mobile app is available for iOS and Android.
- EspoCRM for CRM
- We have not yet built a stack for one-click deployment of EspoCRM, so we installed it manually on a standard Ubuntu 24.04 server.
- EspoCRM is a complete and very likeable CRM system.
- There are no official mobile apps, but a third-party app for iOS.
- BookStack for documentation system
- We have not yet built a stack for one-click deployment of BookStack, so we installed it manually on a standard Ubuntu 24.04 server.
- BookStack is a beautiful home for internal documents and documentation. They deserve better than Word or SharePoint.
- Carbonio and MiroTalk for video conferences
- As a nice surprise Carbonio includes a video server for virtual meetings which integrates with the calendar etc.
- For external, virtual meetings we chose MiroTalk SFU which allows participants to join without authentication, knowing only the room name.
- Authentik for IDP system
- Authentik was installed using our standard one-click stack.
- Authentik presents a nice launch page for all the integrated applications.
- Authentik can use an LDAP or Active Directory server as company directory backend and allow other applications to sign in using standard protocols like OpenID Connect or SAML.
- The built-in LDAP-server of Carbonio is leveraged as directory service for Authentik, which in turn allows all the other applications to sign in using SSO.
The cost of data sovereignty
Installing the 7 applications listed above in Origo Cloud required 6 virtual servers using a total of 12 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM and 260 GB of storage for a total of 3000 DKK per month, including a SLA, support and a service agreement with Origo. Everything is of course fully backed up. Origo monitors servers, networking and makes sure everything runs smoothly. Installation and testing took a couple of working days for one technician and was billed separately. As configured, this infrastructure will handle up to a couple of hundred users without breaking a sweat.
3000 DKK or 350 USD per month is entirely within the reach of all the companies we know of. The quality of these applications is fantastic. The possibilites of integration with other applications and services are endless, because the client has complete access to all the inner workings of their applications and data. Should the client choose to, they can even download all their servers and run them in their own datacenter, using Origo OS. In short, for a very low price you can get complete control of your data and your infrastructure.
Call to action
If you, like many others, like to talk about how we are too dependent on big tech, how about doing something about it?
Like giving us a call.
