Microsoft 365 vs. Univention Corporate Server (UCS)

Microsoft 365 is well-suited for:Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs): Microsoft 365 offers a cost-effective solution for SMBs to access a suite of essential productivity tools without the need for extensive IT infrastructure. It provides a wide range of applications, allowing teams to collaborate, communicate, and manage documents efficiently.Remote Work and Collaboration: Microsoft 365's cloud-based nature makes it ideal for remote work scenarios. With tools like Microsoft Teams, employees can easily communicate, hold video conferences, and collaborate on projects in real-time, regardless of their location.Microsoft 365 may be less appropriate for:Organizations with Specific Software Requirements: Some organizations may have specialized software needs that are not met by Microsoft 365. In such cases, they may require industry-specific software or custom solutions.Limited Internet Connectivity: Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based platform, which means a stable internet connection is essential for optimal functionality. Organizations with poor internet connectivity might face challenges using the cloud-based applications effectively.

Univention Corporate Server is well suited:

1. If an Organization would like to use it as a complete Active Directory Server.
2. If an Organization wants to deploy other applications which are important like SSO, Mail Server, 2FA etc., as with one click all these Apps will be integrated magically thus reducing the Admin job considerably.
3. Web based management which will be quite useful for the Admins who are from Windows background only.
4. Univention as a company which has close to 2 decades of experience.

• keeps me extremely organized. It is so easy to link calendars, emails, and documents.
• keeps me well connected. It is so easy to send a quick message on teams or send an email to a group (for example, my particular team within the company).
• easy to use. Everything is straightforward, making it easy to find an answer to a question. There is even a search option to figure out how to do something within Microsoft.

• Complete replacement for MS Active Directory Server.
• Univention App Center - awesome concept with which Apps can be installed for the Domain.
• App Center can be compared to Google Play Store or Apple Play Store - Organizations can gain tremendous advantages.
• Plethora of Apps which are both free and paid and excellent apps for the Organizations.

• Microsoft 365 really needs to work on protection part. In complex environment it is not reliable as compared to its competitors like Proofpoint. There are many instances where it fails to perform effectively.
• In SharePoint Online the versioning feature of the document needs to be improved by Microsoft. Sometimes when we have to roll back to the previous version it does not work as expected.
• In Teams messaging and app permission policies can be improved. There are some settings where we have to add a lot of things manually.

• As Univention is from Germany, lot of informative articles are in German but English articles are also good but less in number.

There are many features of Office that we cannot replicate in any other tool. Plus people know it already. It's not going away anytime soon.

Incentivized

The interface of the different tools (this suite has MANY different tools) is usually simple to use and intuitive, and you can always re-arrange and add or remove the task you use most frequently from the menus and task bars.

Each tool / product includes a lot of features that may require a more intensive learning, but usually Office 365 tools are simple to learn from scratch, adding more knowledge as you required more advanced features

Incentivized

Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.

Incentivized

Everything works and I use it all the time.

Incentivized

Google Sheets is better for sharing and collaborative editing. Versioning of the same file is also one of Google Sheets strong points.

Microsoft 365 is better for working with local files. It is much easier to store the file in multiple places and backup multiple versions in multiple places.

LibreOffice is free but the usage is much counter intuitive than Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is worse when it comes to UI.

Microsoft Excel's performance with larger files is much better. When opening huge files, excel loads it asynchronously and I can start working right away.

We have evaluated Zentyal and ClearOS but we found out that UCS is more suited to every Organization.

• Positively, it has increased productivity and efficiency in creating templates and being able to systemize some of the protocols we are working on putting into place.
• It has been a positive as well as most individuals and companies that we associate with also use MicroSoft 365 and therefore there is no need to have formats change in our documents when they open them up using another type of program.
• Getting work done quickly.... One and Done!!!

Incentivized

• As a partner, we have gained lot of respect from our customers as UCS is rock solid.
• UCS is truly Open Source.
• UCS has surpassed our expectations.