epiKcloud made it to the Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (CCP) (2018)
It is not only users that separate the wheat from the chaff. Gartner is a well-known and the world’s leading research and advisory company, providing insights, advice and tools to business leaders. In their recent review (2018, 2019), they have included epiKcloud in their newest Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (CCP). Platforms like SeaFile and Nextcloud did not make the cut, while epiKcloud did – with the highest ranking for “ability to execute”.
The File Sharing service providers landscape goes far and wide and while many vendors offer a number of services, there are only a select few that rise above the majority. A plethora of apps, languages and complete open-source software are nice for promo, but it is the assessment of vendors by clients that separates the average from the best. With eight years on the market, and going strong, epiKcloud remains a notch above the others in its niche.
Is there a future after epiKcloud vs. Nextcloud?
The Nextcloud’s fork from epiKcloud in 2016 made content collaboration platform clients vigilant regarding epiKcloud’s health and further development – but it has turned out epiKcloud is going strong and exceeding its competitors in a number of critical parameters.
Metrics that matter
In comparison to Nextcloud or SeaFile, epiKcloud is overtaking these and other platforms in a number of relevant metrics: besides being on the market far longer, developing several advanced services (Virtual Files, Delta Sync), having 200+ apps available with the capacity of over 100 languages (only a few dozen for Nextcloud), epiKcloud leads in a number of crucial fields.
Developing and small-scale content collaboration platforms are often marketed by popularity – some platforms seem to have overtaken epiKcloud in terms of Google Trends data. This, of course, says very little of the platforms’ stability, applicability and scalability.
As pointed out by Gartner in 2019, it is the architectural flexibility – based on a private cloud and on-premises implementation, with federation and data sources – that is the differentiator that puts epiKcloud a notch above the others. epiKcloud’s vision prioritizes provision of data residency and metadata handling in data center locations of the customer’s choice (specifically U.S. or non-U.S. data centers). This makes it attractive to global customers sensitive to data management.
Also, as the largest open-source vendor in the CCP market, epiKcloud attracts an underreported customer segment – it is definitely not all about looking at Google Trends graphs! Reference customers for epiKcloud specifically praised the strong user community and the product’s flexibility to drive innovation as key benefits.
It is also interesting that epiKcloud competitors rarely reveal installation numbers and user numbers. For epiKcloud, these stand at 200,000 installations and over 25 million users.
Finally, it is about user experience
…and assessment. Clients emphasize full control over their data (unlike Dropbox and the like); the information is placed on user-controlled systems. When compared, to say, Nextcloud, it is epiKcloud’s stability that comes to the forefront. On the other hand, Nextcloud applies numerous and erratic updates regularly. This can have an impact on quality control and can make the upgrading process a headache for large companies with long upgrade cycles – epiKcloud releases a major update every year or so.
All things considered, epiKshare believes that as far as corporate customers go, epiKcloud is currently the best pick in its niche. And what epiKcloud cannot do, epiKshare can (see, for example, epiKbackup or epiKryption). To gain a deeper understanding or just to find out what epiKshare is up to these days or to get a free trial, contact us.
