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Status Update 12.01.2024

Filen Blog

• 8 min read
Status Update 12.01.2024
Status Update 12.01.2024

Infrastructure, Black Friday, upcoming updates & more

Welcome to the new Filen Status Update! Almost exactly two months later, we are back again with everything that's happened since the last update. Today's topics are:

Table of contents:


Before we jump into the new topics, let's begin with a refresher on the main topics from the last update.
In the last update, we discussed our three current main projects. And while Filen Collaborate has already been partially implemented, and the Filen Spaces are still in development, significant progress has been made in one of our projects – our current investment project to "migrate the entire service to newly purchased, independently owned hardware and infrastructure, collocated geo-redundantly in new, secure, independent German data centers in close cooperation with experts." So here is all the information about it:

Hardware, infrastructure, and the new data centers:

The "Hardware" project involved the complete migration of our service to our own new in-house servers. This move aimed to provide us with greater independence from running costs, price fluctuations, and supply chain dependencies.

We are pleased to announce that this project is now complete. Filen no longer relies on any third-party services, which means we will gather more resources available for reinvestment. We've already taken steps in this direction, but we'll provide more details shortly.

The new servers have been running very smoothly so far, even if we had minor start-up problems such as a storage congestion due to high loads on December 19th, 2023. Everything is now operating flawlessly, offering significantly higher speeds and great potential for further infrastructure expansion. We will continue to work on the new structure alongside our network administrating experts to maximize its potential.

Needless to say, we ensured all system-critical security aspects were addressed even before the migration started. Our new data centers are all certified to DIN EN ISO/IEC 27001 and offer comprehensive geographical redundancy alongside our software redundancy.

Furthermore, our new locations enable us to take advantage of new security aspects:

The security against physical attacks offers:

  • Security through 24/7 video surveillance from all servers as well as the building. Of course, the entire data center area is also a monitored, high-security area.
  • Privacy measures, such as not displaying our servers on any site plan.
  • Protection by at least 3 separate access barriers, including a consistently logged access system via chip cards, biometric authentication, and numerical codes. Only those who know where our servers are and can pass through all three barriers one after the other have access to our racks.
  • 24/7 security personnel.

Security against environmental influences and other damage:

  • Fire protection measures, including fire compartmentalization of all data center rooms and therefore different server racks.
  • A state-of-the-art argon gas fire extinguishing system. Electrical fires are smothered before they even have the potential to cause damage.
  • Fire-safe room cell construction according to Fire resistance class F120 and F90.
  • Comprehensive monitoring using state-of-the-art fire alarm systems throughout the building.
  • Geo redundancy, both within a single data center premises and also between different data centers.

Protection of server performance and availability:

Air conditioning technology to ensure maximum efficiency by:

  • 24/7 monitored air conditioning technology.
  • Strong cooling. The air conditioning systems provide up to 2 kW per m² in the data center.
  • Redundant air conditioning. The “climate chambers” and cooling plants are redundantly connected to the data centers so that a 24/7 supply can be guaranteed.

Secure electricity supply through:

  • 24/7 operational monitoring of the electronic infrastructure
  • Secure electricity supply through a ring-shaped connection to the 10kV municipal utility's medium-voltage grid.
  • Double design of supply lines. All server power supply lines are doubled so that they can continue to supply even if they get damaged.
  • Protection against power outages with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and a backup power system. If there is a problem with the power supplier, the data center's UPS and backup power systems come into play and continue to supply the data centers with more than enough energy.

A fast and safe network through:

  • Redundant fiber optic cabling
  • Cross-connects between data centers. All data centers are connected both between and among each other via cross-connects. This is how we create a large infrastructure across all servers for maximum redundancy and availability.
  • Network backbone with 4 Tbit/s capacity. Our data center provider operates its own IP network with several fiber optic connections that connect to major internet exchanges in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam.

As you can see, our new colocation partner has provided us with only the latest technology to enable our own servers to operate in the most secure, private, and redundant environment. Our complex and cost-intensive teamwork has protected us against all dangers that could lead to a server failure. From physical attacks to environmental influences, fire damage, overheating problems, power supply problems and network problems. All of these points were very important to us because now that we only have/use our own hardware and infrastructure, we are also solely responsible for all risks and problems.

We're pleased to have met all our criteria, enabling us to focus on expanding and improving our software structure. Once the Filen Spaces are implemented and all major functions are in place, the entire service will undergo a thorough external audit. Our goal is to have every aspect of the service certified, from individual hard drives to the entire data center and from the web drive interface to the mobile app. Of course, in terms of money, time and organization, this will not be possible all at once. In the future, we will also create a new security white paper where, in addition to the new software entries, all hardware security aspects will be further explained as far as possible.

But thanks to your support, your purchases, and your word of mouth, we are well on our way to achieving this goal.

Mobile Update:

After receiving a lot of feedback on the current version of the Filen Mobile App, we've now completed a new update. Your comments on Reddit, Discord, Twitter, and support have been invaluable in identifying and fixing issues. The update is now in the internal beta phase before moving into the public beta phase for our Discord beta testers.

Here are the planned changes i.e. the preliminary changelog:

  • Added Android Documents Provider
  • Added Storage Access Framework support
  • Added iOS Files Provider
  • Added folder downloads
  • Added folder uploads
  • Added notes
  • Added chats
  • Added contacts
  • Added automatic folder organizing for the camera upload
  • UI adjustments
  • App specific files are now in a sandbox on iOS instead of public
  • New performant text editor
  • Added exporting of files into other apps
  • UI dimension fixes
  • Improved app startup time
  • Added Android background transfers
  • Added push notifications (for chats)
  • Added real-time events
  • Fixed sharing files into Android app
  • New image viewer
  • Improved transfer UI & performance
  • Fixed app locking
  • Fixed following of system dark/light mode
  • Added norwegian translation (Norsk bokmål)
  • Added slovakian translation (Slovak)
  • Many small bug fixes & performance improvements

Black Friday:

The Black Friday Sale 2023 was by far the most successful sale we have ever had. First of all, thank you for that.

The revenue generated from the lifetime plans sold was mainly reinvested in our new servers. Through these investments we reduce our ongoing costs, which in turn makes the lifetime plans more profitable in the long term.

Without the last Black Friday sale, the hardware project would not have reached its current scale. It allowed us to make the project more comprehensive and future-proof than initially planned, with more servers, racks, cells, and data centers.

While we haven't become a large corporation overnight, the noticeable growth reinforces our belief that we're on the path to achieving something significant. We aim to build on last year's success and make 2024 a remarkable year through new staff, increased capacities, and expanding structures.

New and old surveys:

In the coming days, we'll publish an analysis of the last survey on our blog. There, you'll find trends in how a representative group of Filen users rates the platform. We'll also classify the questions and share our thoughts on each one. We will not delve too deeply into the matter in order to avoid possible distortions in future surveys.
If you find this insight valuable, we'll continue this practice for upcoming surveys.

A new survey will be conducted shortly to collect data about the 2023 Black Friday sale from the user perspective, the new infrastructure, and other changes. Of course, there will be opportunities to win prizes as well.

New Employees:

Now that the Christmas stress, the holidays, and all other obstacles are out of the way, we can finally focus our energy on the hiring process. We've received numerous applications and are currently reviewing them through multiple stages. Ideally, we hope to find suitable employees locally to foster personal relationships and enhance the office environment.

If you've submitted a serious application and haven't received a response yet, we apologize for this. Reviewing numerous applications manually is time-consuming, and it may take a bit longer. While we appreciate all applications, we sometimes scratch our heads when civil engineers, physics students, or business students apply for developer positions. On a lighter note, playing World of Warcraft and "smoking shisha" might be fun, but they don't typically belong on a CV, although they did provide some amusement in the office.

Our goal is to find a new main developer for each of our products who will manage development and oversee supporting workers This will allow our current CEO to focus on researching new technologies and overall management in the long term. You'll notice it by an increased update frequency and faster bug fixes, with a shift towards more frequent, smaller updates, instead of rarer larger ones. Anyone who read the last update will know, as we discussed it in more detail there.

Trust Agenda:

Our agenda has been completed, but as is often the case after project completion, some areas still require revision.

Since the agenda spanned the entire duration of our hardware investment project, some information needs updating. Once everything is perfected, the document still needs to be translated into English. The German version will therefore appear slightly before the international version.

New Sales:

Internally, we're evaluating whether it makes sense to limit the service's entire sale period to Black Friday. You might see some experimental changes this year, though we won't reveal too much just yet.

Website:

The website is an ever-evolving element that can never be perfected. Whenever we plan new changes, we start thinking about how to improve things further down the line. Although we and you appreciate the current website, there is always room for improvement.

Throughout the year, you'll see some changes, ranging from minor adjustments like a newsletter registration window or a more structured roadmap to entirely new landing pages for Filen Spaces, Filen Collaborate, or possibly an affiliate program. We'll remain true to our current design but aim to infuse the page with more life, sensitivity, and information gradually.

If you have any ideas for structures, information, or general design improvements, please feel free to share them with us. We'll do our best, but we're always open to great ideas.

Conclusion:

Overall, we are pleased with the success and successful project implementation in 2023. Nevertheless, we aim to significantly accelerate our efforts in 2024.
We look forward to making significant changes in 2024, improving our product maturity and taking our market presence to a new level. Our continued strong growth brings exciting new challenges such as personnel planning, quality management systems, more responsibility, larger corporate clients and much more.

We extend our gratitude to everyone who has accompanied us on our journey so far and/or will continue to do so.

As always,
best regards and see you in the next status update in February.