Swiss tech company expands cloud portfolio with productivity services
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Image: Proton
Swiss tech company Proton is launching Workspace and Meet. The two services expand its cloud portfolio to such an extent that it now represents a fully-fledged alternative to Google’s business office suite.
The latest addition is the product Meet, an encrypted video conferencing service. It is secured using the same high standards applied to all the company’s other services.
The Proton Workspace bundle now includes Mail, Calendar, Drive/Docs/Sheets, VPN, password management and the AI service Lumo.
Encryption of video calls is handled using the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) encryption protocol. Proton Meet can be used anonymously and does not keep logs.
The company led by CEO Andy Yen said in a press release: “Proton Workspace and Proton Meet fill a crucial gap in the market for organisations seeking a genuine alternative to Big Tech. In an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape, the inherent risks of relying on US platforms can no longer be ignored.”
An important limitation of Proton’s services is the lack of integrations and extensibility. Because of the end-to-end encryption, external apps such as Salesforce, Slack and HubSpot cannot integrate deeply.
Following the same thinking as Proton Workspace, another European initiative started last week. On Friday, IONOS, Nextcloud, XWiki, OpenProject and Soverin launched Euro-Office in Berlin. It also aims to be an alternative to the office software of Google and Microsoft. The project offers full compatibility with Microsoft formats and is open source with transparent governance. A tech preview is now live on GitHub, where you can find the source code, documentation and roadmap. A stable release is planned for this summer.
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