Looking back at 16th Univention Summit 2023: Open New Deal as the Basis for Sustainable and Open Digitalization

More than 630 IT experts and decision makers from politics, administration,
education and the software industry met last week at our Univention Summit
2023 to "rock IT". The musically inspired motto "Rock'n'Roles'n'Rights - WE
ROCK IT!" referred to our focus this year on the further development and
expansion of the Univention roles and rights model, but also to the digital
turnaround that we want to implement this year together with our partners and
customers.

Those were the Topics

Accordingly, the numerous presentations, workshops and discussions at the
Summit repeatedly focused on IT trends, successful open source projects and
the many possibilities offered by digitally sovereign IT infrastructures, such
as the sovereign administration workstation and the dPhoenixSuite, which we
are developing together with Dataport and a number of open source partners.

Both the presentations on January 17 at the Metropol Theater and the workshops
and technology barcamp on the following day were very well attended, which was
not least due to the exciting topics of our guest speakers and partners that
were on the agenda. And, most importantly, the 31 partners who once again made
the Summit the platform for networking and knowledge transfer for the topics
of Open Software and Digital Sovereignty. Well-known IT providers and long-
time partners of ours, such as agorum, ownCloud, Open-Xchange, ownCloud,
Bechtle, Dataport, OpenTalk and Apple, aroused great interest among the
attendees with their topics and encouraged personal exchanges of experience
following the exciting workshops and presentations.

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Sustainable Digitalization Rocks!

In his opening keynote, Peter Ganten (Founder
and CEO of Univention) introduced the idea of an "Open New Deal" and
explained the significance of a digital turnaround that must secure freedom,
the ability to shape the digital world, and the provision of vital basic IT
infrastructure. Particularly in a tense global political situation, in which
politics and the globalized economy are increasingly driven by the interests
of states, corporations, or even individuals, it is important to form an
ecosystem of stakeholders that creates an IT infrastructure that is available
and reliable for all, based on clearly defined rules.

Already during the industrialization 150 years ago, such a reliable
infrastructure was the basis and engine for global prosperity and success. In
contrast, Peter Ganten rejected protectionist approaches. Global challenges
can only be solved together on the basis of openness, digital sovereignty and
standards. An important component of an open and at the same time integrated
IT infrastructure is central identity management, which enables secure access
to a wide range of IT services and resources - a topic on which he and the
entire Univention team have been working intensively for years and will
continue to do so.

Unlike the current energy crisis, which was at least cushioned by gas storage
facilities, this is not feasible in the case of cloud services. We cannot
stockpile IT, it must be constantly produced anew, our CEO pointed out once
again.

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Our technology partners were also optimistic about the development of an open
and integrated open source solution stack as an alternative to the closed
platforms that dominate the market today, and presented various initiatives of
their own:

• Andreas Gauger, CEO of our long-time partner Open-Xchange, presented the new META API "OSATRA" ("One Single API To Read (them) All") in his keynote.
• Heinlein presented its open source video conferencing solution OpenTalk, a smart alternative to proprietary applications from U.S. vendors, and announced deeper integration with UCS at the Summit.
• At its booth, Dataport demonstrated the latest version of dPhoenixSuite, which is currently being piloted as an open source alternative to Microsoft365 for schools in Baden-Württemberg.

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Positive Response to Presentations & Workshops on the 1st Summit Day

This year's Summit program featured a wide variety of topics and speakers. In
the Education Track, school boards presented their digitalization projects.
For example, Oliver Bouwer and Meik Hansen, IT managers at the Senate of
Education in Bremen, shared the challenges they have encountered with the
digitalization of Bremen's schools. Malte Matthiesen reported on the progress
made in the central administration of school servers in the city of Flensburg,
the district of Hameln-Pyrmont presented its concept for an IT infrastructure
that integrates the city and the district, and the city of Lübeck presented
the successful use of Open-Xchange as a unified mail solution for teachers and
students.

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In the parallel technology track, our colleagues from development gave a
review and outlook on the technical development of UCS, highlighting the plans
for the new UCS roles and rights concept, the integration of Keycloak and the
measures we are taking to make our products fit for use in clouds based on
Kubernetes. Another very interesting presentation was given by Matthias Waack
from Schwäbisch Hall, a pioneer in the use of open source solutions in public
administration, who made it very clear that the only sensible answer to the
growing shortage of IT specialists must be the introduction of centrally
manageable IT infrastructures.

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Following in the afternoon was the Public Sector Track. Dr. Julia Pohle of the
Social Science Research Center Berlin explored the myth of Internet
fragmentation. The panelists tackled an equally important issue. Andreas
Reckert-Lodde from the Center for Digital Sovereignty of the Federal Ministry
of the Interior, Sirko Scheffler from DATABUND, Dr. Ralf Resch, Chairman of
VITAKO, Silke Tessmann-Storch, new member of the Dataport Board of Directors,
and our CEO Peter Ganten discussed the need for open and standardized
interfaces to connect specialized processes to the new administrative cloud.
All panelists agreed that the multi-cloud strategy envisioned by the German
government can only become a reality if interfaces are mandated that allow all
vendors to connect solutions. Otherwise, a quasi-standard based on proprietary
platforms would lead to hidden vendor lock-in.

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The presentation program concluded with a keynote by Matthias Spielkamp of
AlgorithmWatch, who called for more transparency and traceability in the
decision-making of AI systems, and the presentation of Infiity, the new
version of ownCloud, which is said to bring a revolutionary concept for a new
data strategy.

The evening program continued with swing classics, evergreens, and pop culture
from the Bremen-based swing band Trio Royal, and attendees took the
opportunity to make new contacts and deepen old ones.

And Matthias Krischner took a playful look at the topic of independence in IT
when he read from his book "Ada & Zangemann - A Fairy Tale about Software,
Skateboards and Raspberry Ice Cream", and it quickly became clear to the
audience that inventor Zangemann should no longer be the only one who controls
all the devices. It was a nice way to end a very eventful day.

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Constructive exchange in workshops & at the Technology Barcamp on January

18

The 2nd day of the Summit was also a day of "rocking". During the workshops at
the Haus der Wissenschaft and the Technology Barcamp at the Konsul-Hackfeld-
Haus, customers and partners met in small groups to exchange ideas, learn
about new solutions and actively discuss with Univention software developers.
The buzzword "Kubernetes" and the question of how UCS can run in Kubernetes in
the future or even be a node of Kubernetes itself was of particular interest.

Docker Compose vs. Kubernetes on a single UCS was also discussed. Of course,
we listened carefully to the concerns expressed by some attendees about
increased product complexity due to Kubernetes and their desire for
transparent communication and mature education through training and UCS
documentation.

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Univention Continues to Grow

The growth figures announced by our CEO Peter Ganten show how successfully we
have developed. In contrast to many international IT companies, we at
Univention have recorded an average revenue growth of more than 35 percent
over the past three years. The number of users of the Univention platform has
also grown by more than 30 percent, and we continue to grow at Univention
because we are always looking for open source enthusiasts who want to break
new ground together for sustainable digitalization.

To continue this growth, we are consistently expanding our Univention
Corporate Server (UCS) platform
and UCS@school, which is
optimized for the education sector, to create an open platform for broad
deployment and integrating other solutions. The focus here is on the migration
to Keycloak as an identity service provider, the operation of cloud
infrastructures based on Kubernetes and the expansion of the roles and rights
model for differentiated access to resources and services.

Watch the full keynote, panel discussion and recordings of user presentations
from the Technology, Public Sector and Education tracks on our YouTube
channel (only available in german)

For more impressions of Univention Summit 2023, as well as information on
speakers, partners and the complete agenda, please visit our Summit
website.

Der Beitrag Looking back at 16th Univention Summit 2023: Open New Deal as the
Basis for Sustainable and Open
Digitalization erschien zuerst auf
Univention.

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