260 guests at the Univention Summit 2015 in Bremen
Bremen, January 21, 2015. The 260 business customers and partners who attended the Univention Summit 2015 experienced a particularly special event which exceeded the expectations of even the organisers themselves: At the heart of the event was an impressive demonstration of the new “Open Cloud Alliance”, which promises its users an open cloud with freely combinable solution offers. No less impressive was the new UCS Version 4.0, with which the Linux server operating system can finally leave the status of “Windows alternative” behind it once and for all, having evolved into an open IT platform for on premise use and use on clouds.
There is no better word to describe the atmosphere at the Univention Summit last week than “buzzing”, with 260 people excitedly and passionately discussing, debating and exchanging opinions. The two highlights alone (the Open Cloud Alliance and the new UCS version) were sufficient fodder for discussion. “It was the type of event that we wish happened more often”, said Werner Hehenwarter, CEO of the ERP software developer Helium V IT-Solutions GmbH. “Perfectly organised and an excellent platform for making new contacts among our sales and distribution partners and users as well as tending to existing relations. In our eyes, UCS and the App Center from Univention is a forward-looking platform for modern IT operations.”
Open Cloud and integration instead of lock-in
The host, Peter Ganten, CEO of Univention, welcomed the guests to the cloud era. “The cloud has finally arrived. It is now no longer a case of “whether”, but merely a case of “how”. Nevertheless, we still think that the challenge facing us now is how to integrate cloud computing in the existing infrastructure – not replacing systems altogether. With the Open Cloud Alliance we have already taken a decisive step towards mastering this task.” This alliance, a collaboration of hardware and software developers as well as cloud service providers, makes it possible to offer an extensive portfolio of mutually integrated applications very rapidly and simply and to combine it with the end customers’ existing infrastructures and other cloud offers simply.
The decisive advantage in this for our end customers is that they are free to decide whether they want to run each individual app and service in their own computer centre or via a cloud service provider. Changing between ISPs and different applications is also possible at any time without any complications.
The Open Cloud is based on the newly released Version 4.0 of Univention Corporate Server with its App Center, the central management and an already extensive range of enterprise applications for on premise use and use on clouds. “As such, we are no longer simply an alternative to Windows, but rather an open platform for enterprise IT”, affirmed Mr Ganten. “We already offer companies a large selection of cloud solutions and they retain control over their data and services.”
