Barry Duplantis, vice president and genera manager of North America Public Sector business at Mattermost, recently spoke with GovCon Wire regarding Mattermost’s key markets of interest and how the company’s offerings are relevant to the public sector.
In addition, Duplantis discussed the federal government’s communication tools considerations as well as how Mattermost is providing better collaboration with government agencies during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
“Now more than ever, it’s critical that development and operations teams at every organization, in both the private and public sectors, have the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other in real-time.
Old school workflow systems and traditional means of communication and collaboration just don’t work in today’s distributed and agile environments. That’s why Mattermost exists—to bring teams together, help them focus on what’s most important, and create better software and digital operations.”
You can read the full interview with Barry Duplantis below:
GovCon Wire: What can you tell us about Mattermost, and what your company does? How are your offerings relevant to the public sector?
Barry Duplantis: “Mattermost is a secure, open-source platform for workflow management and collaboration. The platform offers a unified suite of tools such as Playbooks, Channels, and Boards to manage workflows and information sharing across organizations, breaking down silos for increased visibility, rapid software development, and mission-focused secure collaboration.
Some of our biggest and most successful customers are in the government space. That’s understandable since government agencies need to be able to collaborate over a highly secure platform. We give them the option of using our platform on-premises or in a secure cloud. Either way, they have complete control over their information and communications. They have very granular user permission controls that let them monitor who has access to what. And, they have great visibility into what’s going on over the platform.
So, we give them the solution they need to communicate and collaborate—but we also give them total control. They can adhere to changing security and compliance regulations, as well as their Zero Trust initiatives, without compromising on teams’ abilities to work effectively.
Mattermost also helps companies thrive within other regulated markets such as banking and insurance. Given the SEC’s upcoming cybersecurity regulations for financial services organizations, these organizations will need a place to collaborate and prioritize their plan of action. We’ve previously worked to optimize secure collaboration for major banks, so we’ll be well-positioned to support these companies in addressing these changes.”
GovCon Wire: Better collaboration is essential for government agencies and their teams. Who are the typical stakeholders and users of Mattermost? Can you talk about some specific examples where Mattermost was used in action by these agencies and teams?
Barry Duplantis: “From my point of view, there are two distinct groups of government personnel who rely on Mattermost. There’s the developer community within software factories like Platform One and Kessel Run, and there’s the mission-focused community like the Air Mobility Command or U.S. Air Force.
The software factory groups leverage Mattermost to support their rapid software development. These teams rely on Mattermost to support collaboration and project management for increased visibility and efficiency.
Mission-focused groups use Mattermost to securely collaborate on team alignment and agility. For example, during Operation Allied Refuge in Afghanistan, Mattermost was leveraged heavily by the air and ground crews. Mattermost allowed these teams to manage developing flight plans and share information so teams could be as prepared as possible.
I think both of these are great examples of the efficacy of Mattermost for both development and tactical deployments. We give our customers the tools they need to create and manage application development quickly—but we also give them the ability to coordinate mission-critical projects and critical efforts in real-time.”
GovCon Wire: We know there are a lot of tools used by the government for communications, so what are some important considerations?
Barry Duplantis: “Security and compliance standards will always be important to the government, as are ease of use and the ability to support rapid deployments. These factors have influenced the development and direction of our platform, right from its inception. That’s what has made Mattermost so attractive: we’re able to provide organizations with a solution that meets their high standards for compliance without sacrificing the fast and streamlined deployments that organizations increasingly desire.
Mattermost also brings a flexibility that not a lot of other platforms can offer. Mattermost can be reliably deployed on premises and in air-gapped environments. As I mentioned earlier, this ties into the government’s need to have control over their data: Self-hosting Mattermost ultimately provides you with complete data sovereignty.
Mattermost is also very customizable. It’s an open-source product that allows users to add applications, webhooks, and other tools that make sense for their use cases. We’re going to see a continued shift to digital transformation, with no one-size-fits-all solution for every need. The ability to integrate different solutions will prove critical and bring a world of opportunity to agencies.
At the end of the day, agencies are balancing a tightrope between an agile approach and a more structured approach to collaboration. They need tools that support rapid coordination, and alignment across teams, tools and processes, but also workflow management capabilities that are prescribed and templatized. Mattermost enables this, all while protecting valuable data with an open-source platform that is capable of existing in the middle of what operators and commands need to get their missions done.
That’s Mattermost’s role. We give agencies the balance they seek by providing them with an exceptional combination of collaboration, prescribed workflow management, speed, and security.
I think it’s exactly what the government is looking for when they turn to commercial vendors to help them address their challenges. We’ve proven we’re up to the task.”
