European rival to collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack, Element, just announced some exciting news. The company has earned the world’s largest single contract ever created for collaborative software services. The company will be supplying half a million licenses to assist communication strategies within the German education environment.
The size of the deal completely obliterates other contracts won by similar companies. For instance, Slack recently won a deal for 350,000 seats to be the go-to solution for the IBM company. Element, which originally launched in 2017, believes that this win highlights the growing concern around privacy and security in communications around the UK and the world.
A Record-Breaking Collaboration Contract
According to the CEO of Element, Matthew Hodgson, Europe appears to be in the process of embracing its own privacy-friendly service for messaging in the workplace. Companies are looking for ways to reduce reliance on Silicon Valley technology. Element’s ultra-secure messaging system is already in use by the German and French military.
The Element environment builds on a decentralised standard for communications called Matrix. The messages on this platform are not only encrypted end-to-end, they offer complete control. Users can retain absolute control of their communication infrastructure.
This is the preferred solution for some companies, particularly when messaging services like WhatsApp may be highly secure, but are also reliant on third-parties, like Facebook. With Element, business conversations are hosted by the participating servers only, rather than being stored somewhere. This is particularly attractive to European governments.
Exciting Growth for Element
The deal with the German states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein for Element will bring the technology to 500,000 users across education and public offices. This process is part of the wider adoption of an open-sourced cloud solution: Project Phoenix.
The deployment aims to improve the digital sovereignty of the region and includes further education environments and secondary schools too. The seats will be made up of a selection of staff, public administration, and students. This new deal follows a fantastic year for Element. In 2019, the company raised an $8.5 million Series A round of funding with participation from numerous investors. The company behind WordPress and Tumblr, Automattic also made a $4.6 million investment in the brand this year.
CEO, Matthew Hodgson, has said that the latest deal is critical for Element. The company already has various other public sector deployments in the pipeline with various government entities. Element believes that Matrix will become the standard for secure communications in the public sector in the months ahead.
Hodgson also noted that Element expects to see a slew of updates to the messaging and collaboration landscape in the years ahead. Predictions from Element include new end-to-end encryption available by default everywhere, and decentralised communication strategies growing as an essential movement for the industry.
