Univention Identity & Access Management will be called Nubus in the future

The Identity and Access Management (IAM) and portal, introduced as Nubus at
the Univention Summit 2024, are already functional components of the
Univention Corporate Server (UCS). To provide more clarity regarding our
products, the Nubus product name will soon be visible within UCS.

At the Univention Summit 2024, we introduced Nubus: an open Identity and
Access Management (IAM) system based on the technology stack of Univention
Corporate Server (UCS). The first standalone pre-release of Nubus for
Kubernetes has been released recently, prompting us to clarify what Nubus
is and how it relates to UCS. This development will bring changes to our
product presentations in our external communications, including a website
relaunch and adjustments within our UCS and UCS@school products. With this
blog article I’d like to give you an overview about these changes.

What is Nubus?

Nubus is an Open Source solution for integrating identity and access
management across various applications. It offers functionalities for
administering users and groups along with their permissions, a user portal
with integrated self-service as the initial access point for end users,
numerous interfaces for application integration, and a unified single sign-on.
Built on these interfaces, there are packaged integrations that make
connecting popular applications particularly easy.

Most components of Nubus originate directly from UCS (e.g., OpenLDAP and
Univention Directory Manager (UDM)) or can be installed under UCS via the
Univention App Center (e.g., Keycloak). This will not change in the future.
For the first time, Nubus became independently usable outside of UCS through
its integration into the Sovereign Workplace
openDesk. This integration was
developed in collaboration with ZenDiS. Nubus connects
the applications Open-Xchange, Nextcloud, Collabora, OpenProject, Xwiki,
Jitsi, and Elements into a joint solution. The integrations between Nubus and
these applications are based on the standard Nubus interfaces and, with the
Alpha Release of Nubus for Kubernetes, are also be available independently of
openDesk. Like all openDesk applications, Nubus will be deployed on
Kubernetes.

We also aim to provide more clarity through terminology and naming:
Univention's IAM and portal will henceforth be called "Nubus." Nubus can still
be used as part of UCS and is now also be deployable on Kubernetes. The
ongoing development of the components will be available for both operation on
Kubernetes and within UCS.

What are Nubus and UCS?

• Nubus is Univention's product for Identity and Access Management (IAM) and the portal. It can be operated under Kubernetes or as part of UCS.
• UCS provides an easy way to deploy Nubus along with other services and integrations on hardware or in virtual machines.

What changes does Nubus bring to UCS?

It is important to know that we will not change the functionality or technical
structure of UCS. UCS will remain a Debian-based enterprise distribution that
integrates identity and access management, as well as portals, and can be
extended with integrations and applications via the App Center.

To make it clearer and more evident how essential Nubus is as a part of UCS,
we will gradually make Nubus "visible" and "tangible" within UCS. This will
roughly occur in the following steps:

1. New Product Logos and Representations on the Website
   With the recent relaunch of the Univention website, we introduced new logos
   for Univention products. The focus will be on the product logo for Nubus,
   which is designed to visualize its modularity and integration capabilities.
   Derived from this, new logos for UCS and UCS@school will also be created, as
   these products are based on Nubus.
   

2. Representation of Nubus in UCS
   As the next step, we will make Nubus more visible in UCS. This will begin with
   updating the logos and descriptions of the apps in the App Center. Gradually,
   this will extend to product documentation and representations within UCS
   itself. These changes will be noticeable to operators and administrators of
   UCS and UCS@school, but largely hidden from end users. One exception will be
   the Keycloak login form, which will feature the Nubus logo instead of the UCS
   logo. If a UCS instance has a custom theme configured, there will be no
   changes.

3. Visualizations, Handouts, and Other Product Materials
   Recently we started updating product representations on our website, as well
   as in whitepapers and handouts. This revision will take some time. However,
   since the functionalities of UCS and UCS@school remain unchanged, the content
   of the existing documents will remain valid.

What changes for UCS or UCS@school customers?

First and foremost, we hope these changes will bring more clarity to our
products. For our many long-standing customers, there will naturally be an
adjustment period, which we aim to support as best as possible. It is
important for us to emphasize that there will be no changes in the daily use
of our products:

• The Functions of UCS and UCS@school do not change
  UCS and the UCS@school built on it will retain the same functions, technical
  components, and apps. We are not changing any source code—we are merely
  improving names and terms.

• The Scope of the Contracts does not change
  There are no changes to our customer commitments. Within the framework of
  subscription contracts, we maintain the promised functionality and provide
  competent support.

• The Prices do not change
  We are not changing the scope of functions or other services promised within
  the subscription framework—and accordingly, we are not changing the prices
  either.

• Customers are already using Nubus
  Nubus is a part of UCS, and the changes to names and descriptions announced in
  this blog post are meant to make this clear. Everyone using UCS or UCS@school
  is already using Nubus as part of UCS—the visual changes will now make this
  evident.

• UCS 5.2 continues this Path
  All statements in this document apply equally to the current UCS 5.0 and the
  upcoming UCS 5.2.

And what about Kubernetes?

At the Summit, we announced Nubus as a standalone product for operation under
Kubernetes. In December, as part of the openDesk project, we began releasing
pre-versions on Open CoDE. On
the 5th of June we release the first Alpha Release of Nubus for
Kubernetes, which will be updated frequently to become a stable release.

Feedback and Contact

With the introduction of Nubus as a product name, our goal is to bring more
clarity to the names of our products. We welcome your feedback—here in the
blog, on help.univention.com or while talking
to your contact person at Univention.

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