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All public educational institutions throughout Switzerland will now have access to the simple and economical open source solution offered by Univention GmbH. That is the content of a framework agreement between educa.ch, the Swiss Media Institute for Education and Culture, and the software company based in Bremen. Thanks to this agreement Swiss schools now have an additional alternative to the existing proprietary solutions.

Framework Agreement with educa.ch Swiss Media Institute for Education and Culture

UCS@school LogoBremen, June 1, 2016. Based on this agreement, all public schools in Switzerland have access to Open Source solutions from Univention. The framework agreement significantly simplifies licensing and purchasing for the Swiss public school system, while cutting the costs of these transactions. They will also have the option of a subscription service to Univention software through accredited vendors, along with access to a full range of supplementary services.

“The educa.ch regards it as very important that alternatives to proprietary ecosystems and Open Source features are considered and evaluated when it comes to the procurement of ICT resources. They offer advantages which should not be left out during a product review”, declared Karl Wimmer, Associate Director of educa.ch when asked about the motives of the media institute for the closure of this agreement.

Peter Ganten, CEO of Univention GmbH, remarks, “For us, the fact that educa.ca has chosen Univention as its open source solution really affirms our strategy: To be open, flexible and easy to use. ”

The offer available to all schools and school administrations throughout the country has three elements:

  • Central IT management by Univention Corporate Server (UCS) which has an App Center with over 80 applications, also school specific applications, and many others solutions, for example, for email, software distribution, and collaboration to download. All these can be fully integrated into UCS’ central management.
  • The operating system Univention Corporate Client (UCC) through which PCs, laptops and thin clients can be operated and administered.
  • UCS@school, Univention’s optimized solution for schools with special functions for IT supported classes like self services for passwords and a special mode for exams.

The Univention solutions function as a platform and identity management system for E-learning portals amongst other software solutions for schools. By virtue of the openness of the UCS platform, schools maintain complete flexibility of choice and implementation of their IT services: They are free to continue to use services they are familiar with and have grown accustomed to, such as their preferred email or collaboration solution. At the same time, they profit from the stability and security of a standard solution. The solution has been used successfully for years by numerous schools in Germany, Austria and Switzerland providing them with state-of-the-art updates and security.

The open source software from Univention gives schools and administrations full control of all their own IT, including their own current integrated solutions. Alternatively, schools could have their IT run by a cloud service provider of their choice. The agreement includes Univention providing all software products and documentation in French.

About educa.ch:
Commissioned by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SBFI) and the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK), edua.ch maintains the Swiss education server (SBS) and heads the Swiss Office for Information Technologies in Education (SFIB).

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