ONLYOFFICE at CS3 Workshop 2020: our summary

Last week, the ONLYOFFICE team went to a notable event for the global scientific community: Workshop on Cloud Services for Synchronization and Sharing (CS3) in Copenhagen, Denmark. More details in this post.

CS3 is an annual conference organized by CERN gathering the developers of Sync&Share solutions and organizations implementing these in their infrastructures.

The conference took place in University of Copenhagen and was co-organized with Deic, a local organization that provides electronic infrastructures for research institutions in Denmark.

CS3 conference room

Workshop’s busy program included keynotes from the organizers, talks from Sync&Share solution and collaborative application developers, site reports, discussions, and lively networking in the meantime.

Specific focus of this year’s event was the launch of CS3MESH project aimed at interconnecting the data sharing and processing infrastructures of European research sites into a singular federation using common APIs. Hence, interoperability becomes one of the key discussion points of the conference, highlighted by a special campfire session.

Digital Sovereignty stands right next: the project promotes independence from any centralized services and encourages implementation of open, self-hosted solutions that are developed alongside the project itself. A separate panel discussion between the key figures – ownCloud, Nextcloud and CERN – was devoted to this topic.

Digital Sovereignty panel

The opening day was complemented with a social event in The Workers Museum that included food, drinks, live music and unbound informal networking between the participants.

Event in The Workers Museum

ONLYOFFICE has a special place among collaborative software vendors of the CS3 community, being used and tested in a solid range of site cases.

We took part in the Collaborative Applications section of the talks with the presentation about powerful document collaboration in web, desktop and mobile environments, featuring the latest ideas and enhancements across platforms.

Key points of the presentation:

• Environment and platform flexibility as a fourth pillar of ONLYOFFICE;
• Deeper integration in Sync&Share platforms: federated collaboration, flexible sharing, advanced security;
• Mobile interface and application development and implementation.

See abstract and presentation

Our team: Mikhail Korotaev (Communications Manager), Olga Golubeva (Partner Program Manager), Alexander Zozulia (Professional Services).

ONLYOFFICE team: Mikhail, Olga, and Alexander

The conference brought together multiple users and partners of ONLYOFFICE and, despite its tight program, gave us great chances to get feedback, discuss plans, and even squeeze in some fruitful technical meetings.

With AARNet team

Alexander Zozulya, Professional Services at ONLYOFFICE:

I was glad to join my team in our third CS3 experience. It was pleasure to meet up with our colleagues and customers from all over the world in person and have a chance to discuss some foreground questions to keep processes moving forward. Particularly, we were able to move forward in some clusterization cases, discuss Document Server architecture in federated sharing, and clarify our perspectives about much needed improvements such as Force Save, Document Server installation with Kubernetes, third party monitoring, and more. With many fresh ideas in mind, we are thrilled to present the results of these insights next year.

With Giuseppe Lo Presti (CERN)

With Jakub Moscicki (CERN)

Multiple opinions (and congratulations) about mobile and desktop editing proved our presentation agenda to be more than relevant. We were strongly assured about our current course, and again verified that we create trusted and powerful collaborative software with vast perspectives in professional communities.

Particular pieces of the program specifically touched our hearts, either thanks to their importance to our own project, unique content, or just overall appeal. Here are some of them.

Partner presentations. In first day’s section File Sync&Share Products for Home, Lab and Enterprise and the third day’s Collaborative Applications, we had a chance to witness the successful evolution of our technological partners: Nextcloud, ownCloud and Seafile.

Interoperability campfire discussion. It was very inspiring to witness highly interactive conversation about essential elements such as APIs in the field where issues of integration, federation and migration among services are in the very core.

Machine learning in particle physics presentation by Enrico Bocchi described the role of ATLAS-detector in at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, and what data storage and analysis means for the research that handles over a petabyte of raw data per second.

The overall track on CS3MESH launch and implementation, including talks from CERN team itself as well as project’s potential contributors and users, truly blessed the venture’s kickoff.

We also want to say special thanks to the organizers – CERN team, Deic and University of Copenhagen – for top-notch organization of the conference, abundantly equipped venue and great hospitality.

Rainy morning in Copenhagen

Nyhavn Embankment

You can always keep track of our participation in international events on our website. For example, ONLYOFFICE is attending MWC Barcelona later in February. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more pictures and live reports.