Alliance of service providers ensures the continuation of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition

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bizi
Znuny newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: 05 Jan 2021, 16:38
Znuny Version: 6.0.32
Real Name: GabiHein
Company: maxence business consulting gmbh
Location: Dormagen, Germany
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Alliance of service providers ensures the continuation of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition

Post by bizi »

After xxx discontinued support for the open source ticket system ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6 at the end of 2020, the company now announces that no further license-free versions of the product will be available in the future. The reaction of the community was prompt. Well-known German OTRS service providers joined forces to form an alliance: The OTTER Alliance now ensures the continued existence of the popular ticket system and the availability of a wide range of service offerings.

(Dormagen, Germany, March 10, 2021) In a complete surprise, xxx announced on December 23, 2020, that it would completely discontinue support for the ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6 just one week later. As if that wasn't enough, xxx went on to state that the software had security vulnerabilities that they would neither describe in detail nor close. Only two months later the final cancellation followed. On February 24, 2021, xxx announced that there would be no further versions of the free OTRS variant (https://corporate.otrs.com/otrs-group-d ... er-notice/). The future of numerous customer solutions thus seemed to be in question.

But the community reacted immediately: Already in January 2021, Znuny GmbH, whose owner Martin Edenhofer is one of the inventors of OTRS, announced to provide security updates for at least two more years. "Due to the new situation, investments of our customers were at risk from one day to the next. We had to act immediately to protect these investments," says Johannes Nickel, who manages the program as Managing Director at Znuny. "And we will go beyond security updates we provide via the new fork Znuny LTS. As early as May 2021, we will publish a roadmap with the planned features for new versions beyond 2022, which will of course also be available free of license costs," Nickel continues.

Then in February 2021, well-known providers of services for the ((OTRS)) Community Edition forged an alliance in cooperation with Znuny with the goal to secure all users for the future. The members of the OTTER Alliance recognize Znuny LTS as the designated successor of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition and will permanently offer their support and services for it. The same applies to future feature releases based on Znuny LTS.

On the reasons for the alliance, initiator Gabriele Hein, Managing Director of maxence business consulting gmbh, explains: "Of course, we and every partner would have been able to offer proprietary solutions to the customers to secure their investments. However, this would have created one-sided dependencies for the customers. We wanted to avoid that at all costs. The OTTER Alliance not only ensures the continued existence of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition, but also the broad and sustainable availability of service offerings."
For users of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6 the change to the designated successor is effortless. Security updates are simply installed as usual. They are delivered via a new fork of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6: Znuny LTS is based on version 6.0.30 and is technically fully compatible, i.e. all components and individual extensions will continue to work without change. So there is no additional effort for the update. Two security updates have already been released since January, the next one is announced for March 10, 2021. The new release will also include the first contributions from the community, which were posted via GitHub.

Members of the OTTER Alliance
The OTTER Alliance was founded in February 2021. The term OTTER is well known in the community. Through its name, the Alliance underscores its commitment to the interests of the community. Founding members of the OTTER Alliance in alphabetical order:
• becon GmbH, https://www.becon.de, Sales contact: Steffen Rieger, steffen.rieger@becon.de
• Efflux GmbH, https://efflux.de, Sales contact: Emin Yazi, yazi@efflux.de
• IT-Novum GmbH, https://it-novum.com, Sales contact: Stephan Kraus, stephan.kraus@it-novum.com
• maxence business consulting gmbh, https://www.maxence.de, Sales contact: Gabriele Hein, gabriele.hein@maxence.de
• Perl Services, https://www.perl-services.de, Sales contact: Renée Bäcker, reb@perl-services.de
• Sector Nord AG, https://www.sectornord.de, Sales contact: Stefan Schäfer, stefan.schaefer@sectornord.de
• Znuny Ltd, https://www.znuny.com, Sales contact: Johannes Nickel, johannes.nickel@znuny.com

If you are running an application based on the ((OTRS)) Community Edition and need more information, please contact one of the Alliance partners.

If you provide services for the ((OTRS)) Community Edition and are interested in supporting the Alliance, please contact us.

For more information, visit https://www.otter-alliance.com.

Press contact

Gabriele Hein
maxence business consulting gmbh
Am Weißen Stein 1
41541 Dormagen

Phone: +49-2133-2599-12
Email: gabriele.hein@maxence.de
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