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.

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.”

Peter Ganten in Kommune21: Public authorities need alternatives!

The ministries are considering implementing a federal cloud. So-called hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Google come into question for this. But this involves dangers, which Peter Ganten discusses in an article in Kommune21:

The operation of the cloud software of the hyperscalers by European companies should solve this problem. However, the manufacturers can install or retrofit backdoors with updates at any time – for example, in order to provide security authorities in other countries with targeted information.

Likewise, the specification of defined interfaces for connecting specialized procedures and applications severely limits the flexibility of public institutions and leads to a much greater security risk, as this can just as easily be controlled and exploited by third parties, according to Ganten. You can read about the solution he sees for these security risks at kommunale21.de (available in german).

IT security on business trips: 6 points IT departments should pay attention to

Home office and mobile working on the move have long been part of our everyday lives and present IT departments with major challenges in terms of data security and convenient working for all employees. Kevin Dominik Korte, President of Univention North America, describes the different security requirements of both scenarios and why remote work should be a particular focus in an article published by the renowned US magazine Forbes.

TechRepublic shows comfortable installation of UCS

UCS offers a wide range of opportunities for companies and organizations. Jack Wallen is also convinced of this:

It can be a domain controller, a chat server, an in-house cloud-based groupware solution, a kanban platform, your Nextcloud Hub installation, a mail server, and with a robust App Center, you can extend this server to be just about anything you need.

UCS@school 5 prepares schools for the digitization of education

Bremen, 1 December 2021 – with UCS@school 5, the leading provider of open source solutions for education and the public sector, Univention, has further simplified the digitization of education. Numerous improvements and innovations that provide for a more straightforward operation are implemented in the new version of the solution, optimized for schools and school boards. That includes technical retreading and more efficient administration. School administrators can effortlessly and almost automatically manage students’ digital identities and assign them to their schools and classes in the completely redesigned and user-friendly online portal. End users will also benefit from the new portal through deeper technical and visual integration of services, single sign-on, and improved accessibility in their use.

Collabora Online and UCS as alternative for proprietary office suite services

Collaborative work regardless of time and place has long been part of everyday life for many employees. Not least because of this, large cloud-based office applications such as Microsoft 365 or Google Docs are very popular. The major disadvantage of using these services, however, is the loss of control over the your own data.

Healthcare IT Infrastructure: Requirements and key elements

In the healthcare sector, highly sensitive data is handled every day and must be protected against unauthorized access. A modern IT infrastructure with relevant key elements increases trust and security for patients. Kevin Dominik Korte, President of Univention North America, reports on the requirements of such an IT infrastructure on the renowned US magazine Forbes.

In his article, Kevin Korte highlights five key elements that can help to make an IT infrastructure scalable, secure, and user-friendly.

The full article is available on forbes.com.

POSSIBLE – Phoenix open-source office solution consortium successful in Gaia-X funding application

Bremen July 1, 2021 – The Federal Network Agency has included the POSSIBLE project in the first tranche of grants for innovative IT projects for Gaia-X. With POSSIBLE, a consortium in which Univention is involved will make the open-source workstation for the public sector (“Phoenix”) compatible with Gaia-X. The goal of POSSIBLE: The digitally sovereign and self-determined handling of data and processes in Gaia-X.