Univention Unveils Major Release of Europe's Leading Server and IT Management Solution

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Nov 20, 2014) - Univention GmbH, the leading European provider of open source server and IT management solutions, today announced Univention Corporate Server 4.0 (UCS 4.0), a new major version of the leading enterprise server operating system. The newly designed and optimized Univention Management Console (UMC) gains new options for managing virtual machines, making it a single point of administration for on-premises IT, as well as for Openstack and Amazon EC2-based clouds. UCS offers an inclusive overview of all virtual machines, making it the perfect solution for managing hybrid cloud environments. Univention's App Center, which includes more than 50 additional applications from Univention's independent technology partners, has also gained major features. IT administrators will now be able to use this single App Center to manage all the applications installed within a UCS domain. The redesigned environment gives users the ability to instantly see on which servers a particular application is installed and which applications have updates available. Likewise, new applications can be easily installed from the central UMC.

Univention Corporate Server 4.0 includes a refreshed management system, including new design that puts key information at administrator's fingertips, allowing immediate access to relevant menus and options. Identity and infrastructure management modules are divided into seven clearly defined and differentiated categories, allowing administrators to always identify their positions within the management system. Special care has been taken to optimize the UMC for smaller screens, giving it a responsive and easy-to-use design independent from devices used to access it.

New features for the UCS Virtual Machine Managers (UVMM) are available thanks to developments in virtualization. Many companies today are not only using virtualization to optimize their local infrastructure but are increasingly using virtualization offerings by a number of cloud service providers. The redesigned UCS module for UVMM can now manage Openstack-based cloud resources or Amazon EC2 environments with the same easy tools used for managing local environments. Univention Corporate Server 4.0 supports all the Openstack providers. To connect to Amazon EC2 administrators need only to install the respective App from the Univention App Center to enable support.

In addition to updates to the UCS 4.0 user interface, the underlying server has gained a major update as well. Debian 7.7 "Wheezy" and the Linux-Kernel 3.16 provide the new foundation for server distribution, providing UCS support for up-to-date hardware as well as over 16.500 packages. Important UCS features include its active directory-like functions provided by Samba 4.2. Updates to the LDAP backend will greatly improve performance in larger environments. The new graphical installer, based on the Debian installer, lets administrators start enjoying the advantages of UCS faster and easier than ever before.

In addition to the new features UCS 4.0 will provide the basis for the newly created Open Cloud Alliance (OCA). The new initiative is set to solve the key challenges in cloud computing today. With UCS as the Alliance's new open integration platform, regional cloud service providers (CSPs) can provide a large number of integrated applications with relative ease. The growing number of cloud service providers and software vendors in turn reduces the dependency of the end user on the large, monolithic providers and gives the choice of applications and providers back to the customer.

The new version of UCS is available online as an ISO-Image or VMware-Appliance at:
https://www.univention.com/download/ucs-download/  

Further Information:
Videos of UCS 4.0: http://bit.ly/11s1d7L
Connector between UVMM, Openstack and Amazon: http://blog.univention.com/ucs-hybrid-cloud-management-via-connection-openstack/
Information regarding the new design of the Management Console: http://blog.univention.com/new-features-umc-ucs-4-0/
The new Central App Center: http://blog.univention.com/central-univention-app-center/
Further features of UCS 4.0: http://blog.univention.com/technical-overview-ucs-4-0-preview/
The Open Cloud Alliance http://open-cloud-alliance.com/

About Univention

Univention is a leading supplier of Open Source products for the cost-efficient operation and management of IT infrastructures. The core product is Univention Corporate Server (UCS), a flexible, cost-efficient and successful alternative to server solutions from Microsoft. UCS contains comprehensive Active Directory functions and an App Center for enterprise applications. UCS allows web-based IT management and can be employed in organizations of all shapes and sizes. The product can be used as a classic server solution, in the cloud or in hybrid IT environments. It can be operated as a component for existing Microsoft infrastructures and supports the simple replacement of Microsoft Windows domains. The company has a global partner network and subsidiaries across Europe and North America.