Imagine a world where organizational boundaries disappear completely. Where collaborating with a contractor in Tokyo is as seamless as working with a colleague next door. Where your workspace isn't confined to your company, but extends across the entire globe through a secure, decentralized network. This isn't science fiction – it's Huly's vision for the future of work, and it's happening sooner than you think.

While most organizations are still debating whether to deploy their software in the cloud or self-host on their infrastructure, we're leaping several steps ahead. In the next few months, we're launching Global Huly – a revolutionary platform that will fundamentally transform how people collaborate. And that's just the beginning. Our ultimate destination? A fully decentralized, blockchain-powered collaboration network that will make traditional deployment choices obsolete. Let's explore this journey from today's solutions to tomorrow's revolution. (Or, listen to this article as a podcast).

The Present: Cloud vs. Self-Hosting – Debunking the Myths

Today, Huly offers both cloud and self-hosted solutions, with our entire source code being open and accessible. While this gives organizations maximum flexibility, it's crucial to understand the real implications of each choice.

First Self-Hosting Misconception

Many organizations assume self-hosting is more economical. Our data tells a different story: Among our 30,000 cloud workspaces, only 2-3 have grown enough to exceed our free tier limits, requiring the modest $19.99 monthly subscription. That's just $239.88 annually for your entire organization.

The hidden costs of self-hosting often go unnoticed:

• Initial setup time and complexity
• Ongoing maintenance and updates
• Backup management
• Infrastructure costs
• Integration challenges with services like GitHub and Google

In fact, the initial setup alone can cost equivalent to five-ten years of Huly Cloud subscription. When you factor in the economies of scale – where our team can update 30,000 workspaces in the same time it takes you to update one – the economic argument for self-hosting quickly dissipates.

Integration Challenges and Solutions

While self-hosting Huly is entirely possible, integration with third-party services requires additional effort. Take GitHub integration, for example. It requires registering your own GitHub application and configuring endpoints – a relatively straightforward process. However, integrating with Google services can be more complex, potentially requiring software certification and penetration testing with approved companies (though workarounds might exist for single-company usage).

Despite these challenges, we know of several teams who have successfully integrated GitHub with their self-hosted Huly instances. The code is there; it's just a matter of documentation, which we're continuously improving.

Looking ahead, as we introduce AI features and Huly MetaBrain, self-hosters may face new challenges, such as the need to rent latest-generation Nvidia GPUs or manage high-end GPU clusters that would be difficult to utilize efficiently 24/7.

The Near Future: Global Huly – Breaking Down Organizational Barriers

But we're not stopping at traditional cloud solutions. In the next 3-6 months, we're launching something revolutionary: Global Huly. This isn't just an upgrade – it's a complete reimagining of how people collaborate across organizational boundaries.

Why Traditional Architecture Isn't Enough

Current cloud solutions, including our own, use multi-tenant architecture that isolates workspaces. While some market this isolation as a security feature, we recognize it as a limitation. Why? Because real-world collaboration doesn't respect organizational boundaries.

The reality is that 99% of users don't work in isolated workspaces. Whether you're a freelancer, agency, or huge transnational corporation, you always collaborate with people outside your organization. You have vendors, contractors, outsourcers, clients, users, and various other external partners. The current model of isolated workspaces creates artificial barriers to natural collaboration patterns.

The Global Huly Vision

Imagine a world where:

• Your identity is truly yours, as permanent as your email address (e.g., [email protected])
• You can collaborate with anyone, anywhere, instantly
• Workspaces become fluid, lightweight containers for collaboration
• All your information is accessible in one place, yet perfectly organized

The current landscape of cross-organization collaboration is surprisingly limited. To our knowledge, Slack stands alone in attempting to bridge organizational boundaries with their "Shared Channels" feature, which allows two separate workspaces to connect for chat communication. While this is a step in the right direction, it addresses only a fraction of modern collaboration needs – just chat.

Think about your daily work: you're not just chatting. You're collaborating on documents, managing projects, assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, and coordinating complex workflows. At Huly, we're breaking down these barriers across the entire collaboration spectrum. Whether you're working on project timelines with your contractors, sharing documents with clients, or managing tasks across partner organizations – everything should flow as seamlessly as if you were all part of the same organization.

This isn't just an incremental improvement; it's a fundamental reimagining of how organizations and individuals can work together in the digital age. While others are building bridges between isolated islands, we're creating a continent where boundaries become meaningless.

The Future: Huly on Blockchain – The Ultimate Evolution

But even Global Huly is just a stepping stone to our ultimate vision. We're building toward a future where Huly becomes a truly decentralized, community-owned platform.

The Path to Complete Security and Trust

Security remains the one legitimate reason for self-hosting today. We acknowledge that Huly engineers potentially can access data in Huly Cloud, and this doesn't change with Global Huly. For organizations dealing with sensitive commercial secrets, this is a valid concern.

However, implementing Global Huly presents unique challenges that can't be solved with traditional approaches, especially when it comes to infinite scaling. This is why our architecture is evolving to incorporate blockchain principles, as blockchains are inherently designed as globally distributed databases.

Our roadmap includes:

1. Launching Global Huly with initial blockchain components
2. Implementing end-to-end encryption across all workspaces
3. Eventually transitioning to a fully permissionless blockchain

While we control the infrastructure and don't need a full-featured permissionless blockchain, our components can already include end-to-end encryption capabilities. Once all workspaces are end-to-end encrypted, the traditional arguments for self-hosting – security, economics, and reliability – will become obsolete.

The Final Evolution: A New Kind of Platform

The next-next generation of Huly will be fully blockchain-based. This permissionless blockchain will ensure that nobody – not even Huly's creators – controls the platform. The infrastructure will rely entirely on community resources, with everyone becoming a type of "hoster," but not just for themselves – for the entire Huly World.

At this stage, the traditional distinction between Huly Cloud and Huly Self-host will dissolve, converging into a singular entity: Huly on Blockchain. This represents not just an evolution, but a revolution in how we think about software deployment and collaboration.

Conclusion: Join the Revolution

We're not just building another collaboration tool – we're creating the future of how people work together. From traditional deployment choices to a revolutionary global collaboration network, and ultimately to a community-owned blockchain platform, Huly is evolving to break down every barrier to human collaboration.

The best part? This journey has already begun. While you can still choose between cloud and self-hosting today, we invite you to think bigger. The future of collaboration isn't about where your software runs – it's about connecting people and ideas in ways that were never before possible.

Stay tuned for the imminent launch of Global Huly, and join us as we build toward a future where collaboration knows no bounds.