Blog Series about Digital Sovereignty

Digital Sovereignty: Blog Series

Part 1: How to secure the ability to create and control for Germany and Europe with Open Source Software

What is Digital Sovereignty? Why is it so important? Where does OSS come into play for the development of an intra-European solution and what contribution does Univention make? These are the very questions our working student Ann-Kathrin addresses in part one of this blog series on Digital Sovereignty.

Architecture Documentation of UCS as example for iterative writing

Univention Corporate Server Architecture
The documentation family for Univention products grew by a new member, the Univention Corporate Server Architecture. You can find the document online and for download as PDF. It is the first iteration of a much larger documentation project that covers the technical architecture behind Univention Corporate Server (UCS) on different detail levels for different audiences.

Second Point Release: Univention Corporate Server 5.0-2

With the Point Release UCS 5.0-2, another important step has been taken for further developing Univention Corporate Server towards more accessibility, better usability, as well as the integration of services and their central management. In this blog article, I would like to give you an overview of the most important new features and improvements, such as the integration of Self Services into the UCS Portal, the introduction of service-specific passwords or various performance improvements in the use of DNS and LDAP, as well as an overview of the apps made available for UCS 5.

UCS and UCS@school: on the Road to Accessibility

Barrierefreiheit in UCS
Most of us find it difficult to imagine what it’s like to work on a computer, tablet or smartphone with limited physical, sensory and/or cognitive abilities. There are numerous obstacles out there in the digital world, not just for users with physical disabilities. Older people and non-native speakers face barriers in digital environments as well—so let’s talk about how we can include all users, in particular users in the education and in the public sector.

Univention Summit: “Shift happens” on the Road to Digital Sovereignty

Bremen, May 20, 2022—Digital sovereignty can and must become a reality in order to secure the innovation and economic growth of Germany and the rest of Europe—all participants at this year’s Univention Summit agreed on this. In his keynote speech, founder and CEO Peter Ganten claimed that we need to learn a lesson from the pandemic and the ongoing war—it’s time for a true digital turning point. “Shift happens—Let’s create a better IT now” was this year’s motto of the Univention Summit. The event has truly developed into a trend-setting get-together for thought leaders, decision makers, and users of digital sovereignty and digital education.

The future is UCS 5

End of UCS 4
In May 2021, the release of UCS 5 took place. Important changes are:

  • New design and improved user interface
  • Expansion of Univention App Center
  • New core: Debian “Buster” and Python 3
  • Simplification and concentration on the essentials

Since the release of UCS 5, installations have been increasing daily. New systems are being installed and existing UCS 4 systems are being updated.

Univention ID Broker: GDPR compliant Broker

ID Broker: ID Vermittlungsdienste für Schulträger und Schulen
On May 11, 2022, we released the new Univention ID Broker to simplify the integration of educational portals and educational SaaS services (Software as a Service) in schools’ IT environments. The broker acts as intermediary service and connects UCS@school (serving as identity management system at school boards, states, and individual schools) with different external services, like learning management systems, digital media, and other educational offers. As a result, students and teachers can log in with their usual credentials to access their personalized and familiar environment. Here they get immediate access to all connected and enabled services (single sign-on).

20 Years of Univention: strong Growth and enhanced Management

Bremen, March 15, 2022—Univention, leading provider of open source identity management and application integration solutions, has closed fiscal year 2021 with high double-digit revenue growth. “Our growth especially in the Education and Government business areas with more than 1.5 million users relying on our solutions, clearly shows: our offer is attractive to all organizations who want to achieve Digital Sovereignty with modern, flexible and open source based solutions”, comments founder and CEO Peter Ganten on the track record. “I am sure that the growing need in public and private clients to improve their control and innovation capabilities in digitalization will ensure similarly high growth for our company in the coming year.”

UCS 5.0: opsi 4.2 in the Univention App Center

The fifth major release of Univention Corporate Server was published in May, 2021. As announced back then, not all apps were immediately available, but migrated step by step. As of now, opsi 4.2 is available in the Univention App Center: one version for the predecessor UCS 4.4-x and one version for UCS 5.0.

Together with the Univention developers and the App Center team, we at uib gmbh have built and tested packages for our open source client management system. As a result, opsi works on UCS 5.0. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the most important features of opsi 4.2 in this guest article.