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.”

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.

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.

Univention Corporate Server UCS 5: Comprehensive modernization and modularization

UCS 5 Logo
Bremen, Mai 26, 2021 – With UCS 5, Univention has published a new major release of Univention Corporate Server (UCS). It focuses on the comprehensive update of the technical basis with Debian Buster, Samba 4 and Python 3. Another highlight is the newly designed UCS Portal, which allows users and administrators to access apps and use them directly in the portal. Univention has said goodbye to the naming of master and slave as terms for the server roles, because they no longer correctly reflect the technical functionality and are thus linguistically outdated.

Univention and the Verband Bildungsmedien e. V. network publishers, schools and school authorities

Pilotrojekt BILDUNGSLOGIN: Logos Univention und Verband Bildungsmedien
Bremen, May 5, 2021 – Univention and the Verband Bildungsmedien e. V. are improving digitization in education with their partnership. The association has commissioned the Bremen-based software manufacturer to connect the identity management of its school solution UCS@school with the association’s license management BILDUNGSLOGIN as part of a pilot project. It intends to provide teachers and pupils with simple access to digital educational media in compliance with data protection laws.

The piloting will take place with selected school authorities, starting in the school year 2021/2022. Afterward, BILDUNGSLOGIN will be connected to all leading public and private school administration and learning management systems.

13th Univention Summit: Important steps towards digital sovereignty

Bremen, February 2, 2021 – “The Corona crisis has relentlessly exposed Germany’s weaknesses in digitization – nevertheless, we achieved a great deal in the past year,” said CEO Peter Ganten, summarizing Germany’s situation at the Univention Summit 2021 on January 29. Under the slogan “Digital Sovereignty – Spread possibilities, not dependencies”, representatives from the IT industry and user organizations gathered at the central meeting point of the German open source community. They informed themselves on trends in IT modernization and exchanged tips and solutions for more digital sovereignty in 35 lectures, workshops and round tables. 26 partners from the IT industry participated. In its 13th year, the event was purely virtual for the first time. However, this format was very well received by the more than 600 active participants of the various live streams, virtual demo points and digital group rooms. In comparison to 2020, Univention registered a significant increase in the number of participants.

NextCloud, Open-Xchange and Univention partner to create Sovereign Productivity Suite

Bremen, January 29, 2021 – Three of the biggest names in Open-Source software, Nextcloud, Open-Xchange and Univention, have signed a partnership agreement to join forces to develop and offer a complete suite of software specifically for the public sector – the Sovereign Productivity Suite (SPS).

Combining products already proven in the market with more than 100 million users, SPS will integrate best of breed Open-Source software from each of the partners. The suite will include an online user portal for easy access to mail, calendar, contacts and tasks, along with online file sync and share, video conferencing and chat, user management features, and an Appstore.

Univention records above-average growth in 2020

Bremen, January 5, 2021 – With its solutions for the secure, independent and efficient operation of IT infrastructures, the Bremen-based open source vendor Univention achieved an increase in sales of more than 35% in 2020 compared to the previous year. The company was able to triple the number of users of its solution UCS@school in the education sector in the past months, now recording around 1.5 million users. 16,000 active instances of the core product Univention Corporate Server (UCS) are used in organizations with an enterprise subscription or as a free core edition.

Order from Dataport for Open Source collaboration platform Phoenix

Dataport has commissioned a consortium of partners, consisting of Univention, Bechtle, Fraunhofer and Capgemini with the creation of a web-based collaboration platform building on Open Source products by Univention. This platform is to enable the gradual shift of the software infrastructure used in public administration and education towards Open Source. The goal is to largely replace proprietary software by 2025 and bolster the digital sovereignty of public-sector organisations. The consortium’s partners will be supported by an extensive network of partners within the Open Source community, as well as the private and public sectors. Other established Open Source solutions will be integrated into the platform over the coming months.