UCS@school and Open-Xchange for Schools in Basel

For some time now, we have been looking for a consistent solution for the mail system used by our teachers and students. We need a secure environment that’s easy to manage. In a combined effort, ICT Medien and Adfinis SyGroup, a Swiss Service Provider, migrated the schools’ existing mail system with around 32,000 accounts. We connected the current identity management (UCS@school) to the e-mail and groupware solution Open-Xchange. In this article we’re going to describe the initial situation, talk about our considerations, the planning phase, and the requirements for the new mail and groupware solution. We’re also going to tell you about our system architecture and the servers involved. During the migration we encountered some problems – you’re going to read about them and about our solutions. Before we start with the more technical details, we’d like to say how happy we are with the new Open Source solution: The new mail system fulfils all requirements in terms of security, high availability, and the current data protection guidelines.

Linux Programs in Windows: Just Integrate UCS in Active Directory

Our Univention App Center offers many open source applications from all areas, which you can add to your UCS environment in just a few clicks. Whether groupware, CRM or backup solution – the list of apps is growing continuously. If you want to use these applications in a Windows environment, UCS offers a particularly convenient way of doing so: UCS can be integrated with existing Windows environment, in particular, in an existing Active Directory domain.

After such an integration for which you use our app ‘Active Directory Connection’, the Active Directory (AD) continues to work as a the primary directory service, while UCS can extend the AD domain by exactly those open source software solutions that are available in the App Center.

Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Neurosciences Switched Live to UCS

MPI-Active-Directory-Linux-Microsoft-Clients
Research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences revolves around human cognitive abilities and cerebral processes. Among other focuses, this includes higher level brain functions such as language, emotions, and social behavior as well as plastic changes in the human brain. For this, a flawlessly functioning IT system is essential.

Univention supplies the IT infrastructure for teaching in Bremen‘s schools

group of school kids with tablet pc in classroom

Since 2003, the Bremen „Senator for Children and Education“ has been developing and implementing a centralized offer for the provision of IT infrastructure in Bremen‘s schools. Among other elements, this covers centralized identity and infrastructure management, defined server and desktop environments, software distribution of educational applications for schools, a school software solution for computer-assisted teaching and roll-out, support, update and helpdesk procedures.

Chrome Warns Users against HTTP – Configure with Let’s Encrypt free SSL Certificates for UCS

With the announcement of July 23, 2018 at the beginning of February this year, Google created a new milestone on the path to a fully encrypted web. On this day the new version 68 of the Chrome browser will appear, which will, for the first time, mark all websites accessed via HTTP as unsafe. Instead of the well known green lock, which stands for secure HTTPS connections, there will then be shown a grey lettering indicating the uncertainty of the connection.

1 Password for All Services and Networks with Single Sign-on

Single Sign-on in UCS at management console

Single Sign-on (SSO) is a process where your users authenticate themselves only once against the system and that’s it. They can then use a whole range of different programs, services, and cloud offerings without having to sign on personally each time again. Your users will love it. No more hassle with inventing and remembering numerous different passwords.

But single sign-on is not only about user friendliness. Another important aspect is, of course, the security of your data. When you’ve got a complex IT infrastructure, which includes mobile apps and devices and cloud services, the security risk increases a lot.

This is why I would like to explain here how you can catch two birds with one stone: Making work easier for your employees with single sign-on technology while keeping your data safer from external attacks at the same time.

Setup of a Collaborative Workspace for a Globally Operating Team with UCS as the Central IDM System

Screenshot of the website of SOLARKIOSK

In this success story, you can find out how we set up a collaborative workspace for SOLARKIOSK AG, a company offering green energy services, high-quality products, and sustainable solutions all over the world. This workspace allows all members of the team to work and communicate with each other from anywhere and at any time – efficiently, reliably, and securely.

Guide to Your Private UCS Server with ownCloud, Kopano & Let’s Encrypt

Have you ever thought?: “It’s enough! I finally want to set up my own robust, powerful server at home to put an end to the permanent threat that someone might hack my precious data.”

I did! And today, I’d like to share with you here all the necessary steps that are required for this. In addition to UCS, my home server scenario also includes a software bundle made up of groupware, mail, and file exchange software, i.e. ownCloud and the Kopano apps. This bundle make proprietary mail and groupware solutions redundant if you like. In addition, I also show you how to install Let’s Encrypt so that the connections to your UCS server will be well protected, too.

Advantages of Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection to Boost Network Performance + Data Availability

Männerkopf mit Binärcode

Would you like some valuable tips on how to increase network performance and user data availability when using Windows clients together with UCS?

Thinking about user data, many of us admins immediately understand that questions about the issues of backups, privacy, and availability, no matter whether across different machines or outside the office, can create us a considerable headache. But fortunately there are solutions in place and in this article I want to cover two of them.