A tech enthusiast from Berlin explains why you should ditch MS Office in favor of a private cloud

For this article we’ve interviewed Marcel Henschke who talks about his experience with IT services, explains why he chose open-source software for private cloud over commercial solutions, and shares the story of how ONLYOFFICE facilitates collaboration in a Christian association in Berlin.

About Marcel Henschke

Marcel Henschke is 34 years old and he has been self-employed in IT since 2014. He provides small companies and private individuals with a wide range of services through his website Techartnetwork.de, including corporate design, PC repair, software installation, virus and malware removal, etc. Marcel also provides users with ONLYOFFICE-Nextcloud combo upon request, maintains the search engine Searx and a webmail client. Besides, he writes articles for his own tech blog.

Until about 7 months ago Marcel mostly used commercial products such as Microsoft. However, after he had once set up a new server and delved into cloud and data protection, he found out that it’s much better when you can edit documents in your own cloud (in this case Nextcloud).

Marcel found the topic so exciting that he immediately wanted to give something back to people. So, he started offering his cloud storage for free and wanted to show users the full functionality of ONLYOFFICE.

Users want it to be uncomplicated and installing an extra app is often too much for them. Thanks to your support, I am now able to offer the users of my cloud the full functionality of ONLYOFFICE and show them how cool it is to work mobile and from any device.

ONLYOFFICE for the greater good

Marcel Henschke helps a Christian association based in Berlin by providing them with Nextcloud-ONLYOFFICE integrated solution free of charge. The entire association board is now using ONLYOFFICE for their documentation, appointments, balance sheets and everything that comes up in correspondence.

Marcel’s plan for the future is to expand the assistance level and to be able to support even more organizations and private users.

ONLYOFFICE makes everyday life a lot easier. Being able to always access the data from anywhere saves a lot of time. I only hear positive things from users and how pleasant it is to work this way.

Most needed features

Marcel explains what ONLYOFFICE features people find most useful:

• decentralized work, ability to work online from anywhere in the world;
• collaborative work on documents;
• sharing docs with other users.

I have been working with ONLYOFFICE for a good 7 months now and I’m convinced of the intuitive operation and the possibility of working locally and in the cloud. I currently recommend all users who are technically not necessarily dependent on the commercial solution to consider this office option and to try it out. I have already written a report (in German) about ONLYOFFICE in my own blog, which is intended to motivate users to try something new.