Six of the vendors behind openDesk, including Element, have formed Open Productivity: a joint venture that brings the sovereign digital workplace to businesses and critical infrastructure operators.
openDesk was created for German public administration. It brings together established open source applications for documents, email, calendars, file sharing, knowledge management and secure real-time communications into a single sovereign workplace suite.
Open Productivity Software GmbH, founded by Collabora Productivity, Element, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention and XWiki, supports the rollout and implementation of openDesk, with the experience of six of its vendors and a network of partners to deploy and run it.
Together with ZenDiS
Open Productivity works in coordination with ZenDiS, the Center for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration, which leads openDesk. ZenDiS continues to focus on public administration. Open Productivity complements it by giving businesses and organisations a way to work with most of the open source vendors behind openDesk.
We welcome the initiative of several openDesk vendors to support openDesk's path into the enterprise market through Open Productivity. Open Productivity enables the distributors and systems integrators that ZenDiS is now addressing with its new partner program.
Pamela Krosta-Hartl, Managing Director, ZenDiS
Element's part in Open Productivity
Element is a founding shareholder in Open Productivity. We provide openDesk's secure, real-time communications: messaging and calling built on Matrix, the open standard for federated communications.
Federation matters for the organisations Open Productivity serves. Critical infrastructure operators work with suppliers, regulators and partners every day. Matrix lets each of them run its own server and stay in control of its own data, while still communicating securely with the others.
openDesk runs Element Server Suite directly from us as the upstream vendor. That means the same ESS we build and ship ourselves, including hardened Kubernetes deployments, modern OIDC authentication and Element Call. Open Productivity customers get openDesk's communications straight from the people who make it.
openDesk has shown what a sovereign digital workplace looks like in public administration. Open Productivity brings it to businesses and critical infrastructure, with the vendors standing directly behind it. For Element, it means more organisations can communicate securely on Matrix, on their own terms.
Dr. Patrick Alberts, Chief Product Officer, Element, and Managing Director, Element Software GmbH
How Open Productivity supports rollout and operations
Through their partner network, each customer project gets a single point of contact, who handles consulting, migration, integration, deployment and ongoing operations. Customers can run openDesk on their own infrastructure or in the cloud.
Three launch partners bring that capability from day one:
Adfinis, an open source specialist headquartered in Switzerland, integrates and operates open source infrastructure.
The msg group adds industry expertise and systems integration, including experience with critical infrastructure operators.
Smile, a French open source specialist, brings integration experience and a presence in multiple European markets.
About Open Productivity
Open Productivity Software GmbH is a joint venture founded by Collabora Productivity, Element, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention and XWiki. It is led by Managing Director Dr Gerald Pfeifer, formerly CTO for EMEA at SUSE and chair of the openSUSE project from 2019 to 2026.
Businesses need more than strong individual applications. They need to be able to deploy and reliably operate a complete digital workplace.
Dr. Gerald Pfeifer, Managing Director, Open Productivity
https://element.io/blog/vendors-behind-opendesk-join-forces-as-open-productivity/
