Open source, data sovereignty and the future of collaboration with mosa.cloud

In a cloud landscape where a few hyperscalers dominate, important conversations around data sovereignty, vendor lock-in, and true ownership are shifting from policy debates to real business opportunities. This shift opens the door for innovation and choice, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) eager to find alternatives that better fit their needs.

Leading this change is a new wave of European tech innovators championing simpler, open-source platforms that put usability, transparency, and control front and center. One standout example is mosa.cloud, our most recent podcast guest.

Catch the latest Cloudscapes episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast platform.

From Google to open source: A journey rooted in change

Neils Kersic’ journey to founding mosa.cloud began in the world of Google Workspace. As a long-time partner and reseller through his company Zzapps, Neils had firsthand experience of the ease and efficiency that came with Google’s tools. But as conversations around data ownership, data sovereignty, and vendor lock-in intensified, so did the need for alternatives.

“We started getting questions from our customers about alternatives and we didn’t have a good answer. So we went out to find one!”

Neils Kersic, Founder at mosa.cloud

That search led to the creation of mosa.cloud, a European-hosted, open-source collaboration platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses seeking simplicity, compliance, and ownership of their data.

Feature fatigue of collaboration suites

Most companies don’t need the “everything” suite. They need a secure place to collaborate, communicate, and store documents. Yet, modern platforms continue to offer an excess of features locked behind per-user licensing models. The result? SMBs pay for tools that their employees barely touch.

The problem isn’t just economic, it’s strategic. Overengineered software comes at the cost of usability, agility, and autonomy. What’s needed instead is a new approach that focuses on clean, modular platforms that do less but ultimately, do it better.

Content over form

mosa.cloud’s design philosophy centers around the idea of content over form. Rather than offering traditional document editors, the platform uses a markdown-native interface adapted from the French government’s La Suite project. This shift strips away unnecessary formatting clutter and emphasizes real-time collaboration, clean content structures, and fast API-first workflows.

Why markdown? Because it’s lightweight, developer-friendly, and future-proof. With markdown, documents aren’t buried in proprietary formats or dependent on a specific ecosystem. They’re portable by design.

Modularity, not monoliths

Behind mosa.cloud is a Kubernetes-based architecture that allows for composability. Don’t like the calendar? Swap it. Want to extend the editor? Integrate it with AI? Automate repetitive tasks? Go ahead.

This approach, inspired by DevOps and open-source infrastructure best practices, brings developer logic into the application layer. It allows businesses to adapt tools around their workflow, not the other way around.

In a recent conversation on UpCloud’s Cloudscapes podcast, Neils Kersic, co-founder of mosa.cloud, noted:

“You shouldn’t need a full enterprise license to let someone check their email once a week. Our whole philosophy is about giving businesses the freedom to scale only what they use.”

Neils Kersic, Founder at mosa.cloud

What data sovereignty really means

Digital sovereignty is often misunderstood as simply hosting data within national borders. But real sovereignty goes deeper with its principles guiding organisations to ensure that their data is and remains subject to the laws and legal jurisdiction of a certain country and is protected against direct influence and access by third-country governments.

A growing number of platforms claim to be “European” but rely heavily on US-based cloud providers underneath. As Kersik puts it:

“If you rip the mask off and it’s AWS or Google underneath, that’s not sovereignty. That’s branding.”

Neils Kersic, Founder at mosa.cloud

To achieve data sovereignty, organisations need to consider the geographical location of their data and possible service providers as well as the integrity of their infrastructure, technology and operations relating to data. 

In recent years we see open source becoming more and more essential to this as it guarantees visibility, portability, and the right to leave.

Portability as a promise

Unlike traditional SaaS platforms, mosa.cloud builds in an exit strategy from day one. Everything runs on standard, open technologies, S3-compatible storage, OIDC for identity, Docker containers, and a declarative infrastructure.

This means if a customer wants to leave, they can. The promise is simple, “if we’re not delivering value, we don’t deserve your lock-in.” says Neils.

That kind of transparency is rare and it forces platforms to stay competitive on performance, usability, and support.

Why open source needs institutions (and vice versa)

Despite being the engine behind most of today’s innovation, open source still struggles with alignment, funding, and consistent development. Public sector support like France’s investment in La Suite Numérique is a step in the right direction, but more is needed.

Studies show that increasing open-source adoption by just 10% could boost the EU’s GDP by 0.4 to 0.6%. That’s not a fringe benefit, it’s a policy imperative.

Open-source collaboration platforms like mosa.cloud can play a vital role here, especially for government, education, and SMB sectors. However, they need ecosystem support from regulators, infrastructure providers, and a community of forward-thinking users.

What’s next

mosa.cloud is currently preparing for its public beta release later in 2025, building on pilots across European partners and early adopters. Their roadmap includes a new email application, deeper integrations, and privacy-first AI tooling.

But beyond product features, their goal is to spark a shift toward smaller, sovereign, open platforms that people actually enjoy using.

In a world where complexity, surveillance, and vendor lock-in are the norm, building simple, sovereign, and open tools is nothing short of radical.

🎧 Hear more from Neils Kersic on this shift toward open collaboration and European data sovereignty in Cloudscapes – available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast platform.