Concepts

Nextcloud Workspace is a unified productivity suite comprising several native applications designed to work together.

Applications

• Nextcloud Files: High-performance cloud storage that provides 1 TB of shared storage per user. It includes features such as file versioning, large file support, and File Drop for secure, password-protected uploads from external clients.
• Nextcloud Office (Collabora): A full-featured online office suite embedded directly in the browser. It enables real-time collaborative editing of text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Nextcloud Talk: A professional unified communication tool offering team chat, video conferencing, and broadcast-only webinars.
• Nextcloud Email: A built-in webmail client that connects to an existing mail provider over IMAP and SMTP.
• Calendar and Contacts: Integrated scheduling and address book applications that integrate with Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud Mail, allowing for centralised organization and meeting management.
• Nextcloud Assistant: A privacy-first AI tool powered by the IONOS CLOUD AI Model Hub. It allows users to generate text, summarize, and translate content. Because it runs on IONOS CLOUD infrastructure, corporate data is never exposed to third parties. Use of the Assistant is included in the per-seat price.

User management

User and access management in Nextcloud Workspace operates across two levels: workspace provisioning in the DCD, and user administration within the Nextcloud application.

• Permissions: Only the contract-owner and contract admins in the IONOS CLOUD Data Center Designer (DCD) can provision new workspaces and define the initial administrative email address.
• Seat scaling: Licences (seats) are managed centrally in the DCD. Administrators can increase the total number of paid seats to match organizational needs.

Note: Currently, seat reductions are not supported through the DCD.

• Enterprise identity integration: Within the Nextcloud environment, administrators can connect existing corporate directories using enterprise standards such as LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, and OpenID Connect (OIDC).

File access

Files can be accessed through the following methods:

• Web browser
• Desktop sync clients (Windows, macOS, Linux)
• Mobile apps (iOS, Android)
• WebDAV protocol for direct integration with operating system file explorers
• External storage mounts (mapped from third-party repositories)

Security

Nextcloud Workspace is designed around the principles of European data sovereignty.

• Data sovereignty: All data is hosted exclusively within IONOS CLOUD-owned data centers. This guarantees strict GDPR compliance and ensures that corporate data is legally and physically protected from extraterritorial access requests (such as the US CLOUD Act).
• Authentication and access control: Each user can secure their workspace account with two-factor authentication.
• Network protection: The platform includes DDoS protection.

Integration ecosystem

Nextcloud Workspace integrates with your existing IT landscape:

• Bring Your Own Mail (BYOM): Connect an existing mail provider over IMAP and SMTP. For example, IONOS Mail or a third-party mail server.
• Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes: Google and Microsoft require OAuth 2.0 for IMAP access. An administrator registers an application with Google or with Microsoft Entra ID, and enters the resulting Client ID and Client secret in the workspace settings.

Shared responsibility model

Nextcloud Workspace operates under a shared responsibility model — a common standard for managed cloud services. This collaborative approach guarantees that you retain absolute control and ownership over your data and workspace environment, while IONOS CLOUD takes care of the underlying infrastructure, security, and platform maintenance.

Responsibility Area	IONOS CLOUD	Customer
Physical infrastructure and data center security	✅
Platform availability and uptime	✅
Application security patching and version upgrades	✅
Infrastructure compliance	✅
User creation, management, and offboarding		✅
Password and access policies within the workspace		✅
SSO / LDAP / AD configurations		✅
Data stored within the workspace and data governance		✅
Backup of workspace content		✅
Sharing permissions and folder structures		✅
Third-party integrations (Example: IMAP and SMTP)		✅

For more information on the day-to-day usage and feature configuration of your workspace, please visit the official Nextcloud documentation.