Cloudient runs entirely on open-source software, by choice. It is what lets us take responsibility for your whole stack, keep everything auditable, and make sure you are never locked in.
Why open source matters
Proprietary software creates dependency. When your business runs on software controlled by a single vendor, you are subject to their pricing decisions, their product direction, their data practices and their continuity. If they change terms, raise prices, discontinue a product or are acquired, your options are limited.
Open source removes that dependency. The software is freely available, can be inspected and audited, can be modified to suit your requirements, and can be maintained independently of any single vendor. Your data remains yours, your processes remain yours, and your choice of provider remains yours. For a business choosing its technology, that means lower total cost of ownership, freedom to integrate and customise, and resilience against lock-in.
How we use open source
Cloudient's entire infrastructure runs on open-source software - from the operating systems on our servers, through the virtualisation and container platforms, to the applications we deploy for you. There is no proprietary software in the stack. This is deliberate, and it means:
- Everything is auditable
- You or your auditors can verify exactly what is running.
- No lock-in at any layer
- From the metal to the application, nothing ties you to us or to a vendor.
- Adaptable to you
- We can customise and adapt any part of the environment to suit your requirements.
- Maintainable indefinitely
- No licence expiry and no forced upgrades - software can be kept current on your terms.
- Longer hardware life
- There is no planned obsolescence driven by rising software requirements.
When we deploy applications - Odoo, Nextcloud, Jitsi, PeerTube or bespoke solutions - we use the community editions and contribute to the ecosystems that produce them.
Community involvement
We are members of the Odoo Community Association (OCA), the organisation that coordinates development of the Odoo Community edition and its ecosystem of modules. This keeps us close to the software we deploy. Beyond Odoo, we participate in the broader open source and digital commons ecosystem, because sustainable digital infrastructure depends on active participation, not just consumption.
Open source and security
A common misconception is that open-source software is less secure because the code is public. In practice the opposite is often true. Open-source software benefits from broad review by independent developers and security researchers; vulnerabilities are found and addressed by the community, and fixes are available to everyone immediately.
Proprietary software relies on secrecy - "security through obscurity" - which does not withstand sustained scrutiny. Open source relies on transparency, peer review, and the ability of anyone to verify that the software does what it claims. We complement this with our own practices: regular code scanning, dependency checks and infrastructure hardening. You benefit from both the community's vigilance and our operational discipline.
Open source and sustainability
Digital systems consume significant energy, and open source contributes to sustainability in ways that are easy to miss. Proprietary software frequently drives hardware replacement through rising system requirements and end-of-support policies; open-source software can run on existing hardware for much longer, reducing waste and the energy cost of manufacturing new equipment. We extend this further: we do not process your data for analytics, advertising or AI training, so there is no unnecessary background processing. The systems we run do what they are configured to do, and nothing more.
Open source and data sovereignty
When your services run on open-source software on infrastructure your provider controls, your data stays where you put it. There are no opaque data-processing agreements, no third-party analytics, and no ambiguity about who has access to your information. Combined with our choice to host in UK and European data centres under strong data protection, this gives a level of data sovereignty that is difficult to achieve with hyperscaler platforms or proprietary SaaS.
The alternative to SaaS and hyperscalers
The market increasingly pushes businesses towards SaaS subscriptions and hyperscaler cloud. These can be convenient, but they come with trade-offs: loss of control, data dependency, unpredictable pricing and lock-in. Open source, deployed on managed infrastructure, is a genuine alternative - the convenience of a managed service with the control and independence of running your own software. The cost is predictable, the data is yours, and you are never locked in.
We are not anti-cloud or anti-SaaS; they have their place. But for businesses that want control, transparency and independence, open source on managed infrastructure is the better path. That is the service we provide.
See our services or get in touch to discuss your requirements.