Our vision:
Digitization is not, and cannot be, a one-way street. We believe that users have to set the direction. This is why we need IT environments which allow people, states, institutions, and organizations to understand, control, and comprehend processes and data flows. That’s the only way we can make self-determined decisions based on our value systems and requirements.
Why do we need a debate on digitization?
Digitization is rapidly entering all areas of our lives. We use IT systems for our private and professional communications, digitize our work processes and benefit from digital education offers in schools and universities. This process is accelerating and increasingly determining how we organize ourselves as a society.
A few large IT corporations dominate the process, expanding their offerings of IT, cloud, social media, and internet services into comprehensive and integrated platforms. They are convenient to use, and more and more users tend to believe that there is no alternative. But they harbor risks: their services are closed to the outside world, and third parties can hardly trace the data collected and the processes involved. This limits our control and ability to shape the future, on an individual, economic, and state level. All services are only available on the companies’ terms. But how do we break away from this development?
Sovereignty as the cornerstone of digitization
Added value
Independent of proprietary, closed systems
Data sovereignty
Available to owners and used for the benefits of all
Independence
No influence by corporations and governments
Cooperation
Based on established rules and open standards
Our mission:
An open, federated,
and scalable IT platform
To achieve this, we are creating the Univention Corporate Server (UCS) and UCS@school platforms. They fulfill the demand for digital sovereignty and put control back into the hands of their users.
Open
The source code of our platform is openly accessible, and anyone can modify it, develop it further and adapt it to their own needs. Thanks to open standards, a wide variety of other applications can be connected. At the same time, the central concept ensures that these applications are technically well integrated—easy to use and convenient to manage.
Data secure
Our platform can be operated anywhere—in users’ own data centers (on-premises) or at the cloud provider of their choice. It is also easy to develop and implement hybrid concepts. This means that sensitive areas and data can remain under the users’ own control, while other components are outsourced to public clouds.
Federated
Individual instances of our platform are capable of federation, i.e. they can be connected to others—making the platform as scalable as the Internet itself. We are collaborating with many partners who also want to realize Digital Sovereignty. All users and organizations can participate, so that everyone benefits from each other, creating something great together.
Our goal:
Control and
Innovation for IT environments
We’re creating a genuine alternative to the seemingly omnipotent offerings of the hyperscalers. At the same time we’re working on a new and better IT landscape for the future—focussing on users and their needs, and inspiring them instead of creating dependencies and triggering fear of losing control. Because this is how we create real freedom of choice, and make innovations possible.
Das ist Univention
Since 2002, we have offered companies and institutions open source solutions for managing digital identities and integrating IT applications with UCS and UCS@school. We enable them to keep their data and processes under their control. They can decide for themselves which solutions they want to use, optimally adapt their IT to their own needs, and remain independent of specific manufacturers. Therefore, we create the basis for digital sovereignty and a self-determined and future-oriented IT. Learn more about our products, who we are, and what shapes our work.
