The interview
Q: What is your name?
My name is Veronika Mazour, I'm the founder and CEO of exoPlatform.
Q: What is your product?
exoPlatform is a digital work environment (DWE), a sovereign alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace. exoPlatform offers a complete digital workplace based on four interconnected pillars: an internal communication tool focusing on the company's community and its development, a collaborative suite allowing document editing, task management, team synchronisation using to a diary and a videoconferencing tool. In addition there is a solution for optimising productivity for each employee, a file transfer tool and a favourites system. A central knowledge management system allows management of documents and tutorials making all the informations and resources necessary for running of the company in one place.
Q: What are the unique selling propositions of your product? Is your solution different or better than competing solutions?
This consolidating and aggregating approach to connected tools, designed in a collaborative manner and based on a large number of applications developed by the company itself as well as other open source software (BigBlueButton, Jitsi, OnlyOffice, Elasticsearch, etc.) has won over many customers in the public (governments, ministries, local authorities) and the private sector (banking, industrial, commercial and supermarket sectors).
In addition, eXoplatform emphasises security, for example by using keyword analysis to prevent accidental sharing of sensitive documents and two-factor authentication. This way we attracted several clients in the field of Defence, in particular the French Gendarmerie Nationale and NATO, as well as the US Department of Defence, eXoplatform's first client back in the 2000's.
Q: Which free and open source software solutions do you use?
We have integrated many open source solutions in our platform, for example BigBlueButton, Jitsi, OnlyOffice and Elastisearch.
Q: Why did this client choose your solution rather the solution of the market leader or GAFAM?
By focusing on open source and interoperability, eXoplatform remains open to the world, far from the "vendor lock-in" of proprietary Microsoft or Google solutions, while presenting viable, sovereign and less expensive alternatives that favour the gradual transition away from GAFAM.
Q: Tell us about a successful implementation. How did you implement it, why was it a success, where is this implementation today? Plans for the future? How is the relation with the client? Did the client help you get other clients?
Among the most loyal and important customers of eXoplatform is the Elysée, which has been using our intranet for its numerous collaborators for over five years now. The security, its simplicity of use, as well as the will for the French state institutions to use and promote collaborative solutions and sovereign and free technologies, led the Elysée to turn to eXoplatform. Implementation was a success and allowed modernisation of a very traditional previous solution. By responding to the invitation to tenders from the French Presidency, which emphasised its desire to promote open source, eXoplatform was able to enter the political and ministerial networks that are difficult to access, which also enabled the deployment of a collaborative platform within the Gendarmerie nationale and also helped to make the French company known. This resulted in new clients in foreign ministries, for example in Paraguay and several African countries. It shows that our French solution can compete with our extra-European competitors, and that it is quite possible for a European technology to meet the expectations in terms of reliability, security and manageability of national and supra-national public services, while respecting European legislation on data protection and the promotion of free software.