4 small steps to try Enterprise features in your ownCloud appliance!

While ownCloud is entirely free to use, you might consider the ownCloud Enterprise features, too. A lot of professional features wait to be tested and implemented. In part 3 of our appliance how-to series we show you how you set up your 30 days Enterprise Trial.

In our Appliance series, we already covered how you can setup the Appliance, and which first steps are most useful after the installation. This post will show how you can activate the Enterprise Trial to see if the additional ownCloud features can leverage your Business.

The ownCloud Appliance is perfect for trying out Enterprise features. They are free for 30 days, plenty of time to find out what makes ownCloud so great for collaboration at the workplace.

ownCloud is free software, and is completely open source. You can trust our software, because you can read every line of source code which runs on your server. This also applies to our Enterprise features, which are available on the ownCloud Marketplace.

The ownCloud Enterprise apps

You will get following apps, which enhance your ownCloud:

• Ransomware Protection: Protect data from ransomware threats
• SAML/SSO Integration: Single Sign-on integration for SAML 2.0 compatible Identity ProvidersWorkflows: Automated File Operations based on Collaborative Tags
• Password Policy: Define password policies for user and public link passwords
• Collaborative Tags Management: Admin interface for managing Collaborative Tags of an ownCloud instance
• Object Storage Support: Backend to integrate object storages via S3 as primary storage
• ownCloud X Enterprise Theme: Equip your ownCloud instance with the official ownCloud X Enterprise Theme
• LDAP Home Connector: Integration of Windows User Directories via LDAP/AD attributes
• File Firewall: Rule-based access control engine to enforce fine-grained compliance policies
• Auditing: Keep track of user and admin actions. In some cases this is needed for compliance with corporate guidelines
• External Storage – Sharepoint: Integrate Sharepoint as external storage
• External Storage – Windows Network Drives: Integrate Windows and Samba/CIFS shared network drives as external storages
• Enterprise License Key: validates the Enterprise Key, necessary for all other Enterprise features to work

In 4 small steps to the Enterprise features

1. Marketplace

Login to the Marketplace – or register, if you have not already. On the Marketplace website, you can start the Enterprise Trial. You will then see a few steps – they are also explained here for the sake of redundancy. Those steps are the same for the ownCloud Appliance and any other ownCloud server.

 2. Add the API key

Now you have to add the API key to your ownCloud Appliance. You can find it in your profile in the Marketplace or in the Enterprise Trial overview. In the market app you can add it by clicking on “Edit API key”, pasting the key into the field, clicking on “Save”, and “Close”.

3. Start the Trial

Now you can click on the “Start Enterprise Trial” button. You then have to accept the license terms, as the Enterprise apps are not licensed under aGPL like the rest of the ownCloud server, but under the ownCloud Commercial License.

4. Install the Enterprise Apps

Finally you can install the Enterprise apps. To do this, go to Bundles section in the Market app. You will see a list of all the apps contained in the “ownCloud Enterprise Edition Apps” bundle. At the bottom of the page, click on “Install Bundle”, and watch how they get installed one by one.

This is it! Now you can test the apps, play around with the various 3rd party integrations, and look how it benefits your use case.

That’s it! And next?

After 30 days, the Enterprise Trial is deactivated automatically. You can continue to use the ownCloud Community Edition like before.