Recently, I reported on the incredible success of a new Slack rival in the collaboration field, Element. The European company recently earned the single largest contract in the world for a collaborative software solution, capturing the attention of companies worldwide.
Element agreed to deliver a decentralised communication system for the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg in Germany – serving around 500,000 users. I thought it was time to take a closer look at what this rapidly-evolving company could offer for today’s collaborating teams.
Element promises today’s teams a unique way to stay connected wherever they are, without putting data sovereignty or security at risk. This is an app that bridges the gap between flexibility and security in a way that’s truly brand-new. Here’s a quick insight into the Element app.
Security and Privacy at the Core
There’s no shortage of collaboration apps available for business leaders today. However, few of these solutions offer the exceptional security and privacy that businesses need to feel completely safe in a work anywhere landscape. Element’s universal platform for secure messaging solves this problem.
Already popular with organisations like the German defence forces, and the French government, Element is all about promoting data sovereignty, and safeguarding conversations. Despite being relatively new, Element’s technology already has more than 11 million users, and even helps businesses to manage secure conversations across existing tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack.
The all-in-one secure app for teams and colleagues keeps your conversations within your control, so you can avoid issues like data mining and breaches. Features include:
- Group chat and one-on-one messaging for quick conversations
- Video calls with security from the ground-up
- Open conversations – securely connect external and internal conversations
- Integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams and Signal to break down business silos
- Data privacy with true ownership of your data
- End-to-end encryption for every conversation by default
- Data storage options, including the choice of where you want to store your data
What Makes Element Different?
Element benefits from being incredibly open, flexible, and secure at the same time. You can have easy conversations with internal and external contacts without any special configurations or change requests. There’s also easy collaboration with any other Matrix-based apps, for better federation across all organisations.
As a fully open solution, Element provides a range of bridges to offer connectivity to people who are still using systems like Microsoft Teams and Slack. However, at the same time, you get an unprecedented level of control. You can host your conversations on-premises or via a system in your domain. With Element, businesses can avoid the headache of shadow IT, by giving your teams an experience that’s consumer-level in simplicity.
At the same time, your messaging and collaboration strategies remain safe and secure thanks to strong data retention policies, compliance strategies, and a comprehensive audit trail. All that, and you get default end-to-end encryption that scales to thousands of users in every room. That means that you have better protection against accidental eavesdroppers and interferences too.
