How to Install Open Source SuiteCRM and Empower Sales

The core sales tool for every business in our increasingly data-centric world is customer relationship management (CRM). Your sales benefits greatly from CRM by collecting the best data of your leads. Likewise, marketing and general business planning also profit a lot from having the right information about customers and potentials. Using easy, web-based CRM tools, even the smallest business can utilize their power today.

Sales tool out of the box

There are numerous CRM solutions on the market, each with their unique advantages. In my opinion and personal experience the Linux-based software SuiteCRM stands out as it offers a comprehensive and easy to use user interface that is ready to use out of the box, but can also be easily adapted to your unique situation if needed. SuiteCRM provides easily understandable overviews of your customer engagement process. Apart from lead and contract management it also includes project management, invoicing modules, further extensions, and it is open source.

With the following installation and operation guide I like to help you get SuiteCRM set up and running. Look how you can manage it with ease via UCS!

Brief Introduction: SAML

Schaubild Übersicht SAML

Web-based work has been a widespread phenomenon in many industries for a long time already and is increasingly become standard practice thanks to the recent trend of cloud computing. This all sounds great to begin with, as you also have access to web-based programs from outside of the company and are thus able to work from practically wherever you want, whenever you want. However, the direct consequence of this flexibility is that each user has to remember more and more login data for the individual programs for security reasons. Added to this is also the time and effort required every day for logging in and out of each program, depending on how many programs you work with in parallel.

Luckily, this is where SAML – security assertion markup language – comes into its own. SAML is a secure, XML-based data format for the exchange of authentication and authorization information so as not to put a company’s data security at risk despite web-based working. At the same time, it also offers each and every user an optimal level of comfort.

OX in a Box: A Self-Contained Open-Xchange Environment for Containers and Virtual Machines

Schaubild OX in a box

Container technologies like Docker make it possible for service providers to easily offer separated, private environments containing Open-Xchange and other services at a low footprint. But usually management of these services is a challenge.

Univention provides a complete open environment to run and manage Open-Xchange inside Docker and popular hypervisors. This includes life-cycle, patch and identity management (IdM), a management GUI for customers, connectors to Microsoft Active Directory, and the possibility to integrate a dozens of other applications.

Single Sign-On Concept

Single Sign-On Schaubild

The increasing number of programs that employees in companies have to deal with day in, day out makes their work not only easier but also increasingly more complex. In addition, a higher number of applications also translates to an increasing security risk for the data in the corporate network.

We would now like to take this opportunity to explain how you can make work easier for your employees with single sign-on technology and keep your data safer from external attacks at the same time.

Secure Operation of Existing Applications in the Corporate Environment with Open Source Tools

Last year I submitted my Master’s thesis titled “Secure Operation of Existing Applications in the Corporate Environment with Open Source Tools”, and successfully earned my degree in IT from Bremen University of Applied Sciences. My research focused in particular on the differences and the security-related advantages/disadvantages of server virtualization compared with operating system virtualization, which had undergone much less intense testing at the time.

As I can imagine that this is a topic which will also be of interest to some of you too, I decided to summarize the most important findings of my work here:

Univention App Center Provider Portal

Übersicht - App Center Provider Portal
In the new App Center Provider Portal we have now developed an extremely convenient and contemporary tool for software providers looking to include their solutions in the Univention App Center and subsequently maintain them.

The App Center is already home to more than 90 different apps developed for use in business IT, including groupware, ERP, CRM, and back-up solutions as well as solutions for a wide range of other application scenarios. Over 50 of these solutions are third-party apps from other developers and providers. For them, the App Center is the perfect channel for introducing their software to new user groups simply and easily. After all, as use of the free Core Edition of UCS and UCS as a subscription model with support and manufacturer’s warranty continues to become more and more widespread, the apps are readily available to an ever large number of organizations and private users.

Introduction to the Univention App Catalog & UCS Appliances

The Univention App Center is an integrated part of UCS, our Open Source server and IT management software. With the integrated App Center UCS provides a central platform for the provision and integration of numerous enterprise applications.

Find more infomation on the App Center and all available appliances at App Catalog.

In the following video we introduce you to the Univention App Catalog and the pre-configured UCS appliances in particular. These appliances allow you to easily test many of the over 90 applications from the App Center.

Release 4.1-4 Supports French and Includes Latest Samba Software

UCS Release 4.1-4 Logo

With UCS 4.1-4 we released the fourth patchlevel release of Univention Corporate Server (UCS). According to UCS wide-spread use on a global scale, the installation wizard and the UCS management system now also support the French language.

Screenshot UCS französisch

On a technical scale, we focused on the improvement of UCS’ robustness, speed, and performance, particularly in large and heterogeneous environments. This focus is attributed to the fact that UCS has been increasingly used for managing identities and rights of large organizations with tens of thousands of users.