Today, we kick off our new blog series with captivating Stories from our Subscribers, starting with a fascinating field: genomics research. In this scientific field, where data exhange is crucial, finding the right digital infrastructure partner can make all the difference. Take The Elshire Group, for example — a family-owned genomics research company based in beautiful Aotearoa New Zealand. Their journey to seamless data management led them to our Nextcloud Managed Hosting service. We asked Robert Elshire about his thoughts on using Nextcloud and our managed hosting service for their daily operations and he was kind enough to respond to our questions.

Join us as we explore this use case, uncovering how digital infrastructure plays a pivotal role in The elshire Group operations and why Cloud68.co became their go-to for reliability and efficiency. Let’s dive into this journey, beginning with an overview of The Elshire Group and their unique work in genomics research.

1. Can you provide us with an overview of your organization and your role within it?

The Elshire Group is a contract genomics research company based in Aotearoa New Zealand. We provide a genotyping by sequencing service to clients around the world. Research areas we work in include: plant and animal breeding, ecology, conservation biology, landscape genomics and related fields. We are a small, two person family business.

2. What prompted the realization of the need for digital infrastructure within your project?

Our work generates very large data files for our collaborators. Our primary consideration was that we needed a way for them to download the files that was simple and robust. In addition, there were many office tasks that we could do more efficiently using Nextcloud on a grunty server.

3. Why did you not choose digital solutions from major tech companies or handle the deployment and management of open-source software yourself?

I have been a member of the Free Software community for over 20 years. When I set up my first genetic research lab in 2000, I did all of the system administration work myself. Using an all Free Software / Open Source technology stack has allowed us to avoid vendor lock in while being able to adapt it to our specific needs – something almost impossible with the proprietary software of the large tech companies. When we started our own company, we wanted to push part of our technology stack outside of the business to people who are professionals so that we could focus on our core offerings.

4. How did you first learn about our team and our services, and what factors led you to select our team over other providers?

We did not find Cloud68 right away, but we wish we had. We knew that we wanted to use NextCloud and did a search from their site for providers in 2016. We chose a company that looked like they have been around for a long time. In the end, they were expensive (partly due to a intermediary company with a exclusive contract in New Zealand). They were not very responsive either. In the end, that company moved to a proprietary software model, giving us 14 days notice and leaving us in a difficult position. We found a different provider, who also were not able to configure a set up that worked properly. We finally found Cloud68. They have been, by far, the best group we have worked with to meet our specific business case needs. They discussed our needs, configured a system for testing. Through testing, together we determined it was not quite what we needed. They set up another with specs that were appropriate and located it near us. We have been with them ever since.

5. Can you share your experience thus far with our managed hosting service for your open-source software?

In a word, outstanding. The Cloud68 team not only has awesome technical abilities (resulting in a set up that just works), they have excellent, clear communication, quick response to questions, and are very reasonably priced. I would (and do) recommend Cloud68 to anyone who could benefit from their services.

Hassle free open source collaboration

Are you a team that is collaborating across borders and need to share your data, calendars, and other collaboration tools? Try our Nextcloud managed hosting packages for 15 days without any commitments and see if it fits your workflow in a similar way with The Elshire Group. Take the next step towards efficient collaboration and reliability by choosing Nextcloud as your open source tool and we will take care of the rest including software deployment, storage, backups and highly rated tech support.

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