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We’re delighted to share that openDesk now deploys Element Server Suite (ESS) directly from Element. The Element frontend still reflects the openDesk product and branding, but now openDesk deploys Element Server Suite (ESS) directly from Element, the original manufacturer and product owner of the software. It brings hardened Kubernetes deployments, next-generation OIDC-based authentication and the complete ESS feature set to Germany’s sovereign office productivity suite.

People do their best work in a state of flow, when they can move from a conversation to a document to a task without breaking their train of thought. That puts the onus on productivity vendors to make their tools work together seamlessly. Customers running sovereign stacks tell us exactly that. As one put it: "It isn't a problem that the apps are named different things, or that they're made by different vendors.

TL;DR When deploying a service on your infrastructure, it can be tempting to just grab open source containers and roll them out with simple tools. Docker compose or ansible playbooks can do a fantastic job at rolling out a few containers in no time. But putting simple services online is the easy bit. The more containers in your stack, the more difficult it becomes to deploy them consistently, and the more chances for it to break.

We’re delighted to announce that we’re now working with Arawa to support France's “fédération Matrix des collectivités.” Arawa has just started working with Adullact, the non-profit coordinating the usage of open source software within local authorities, and Déclic, the federation of OPSN (Public Digital Service Operators), to deliver and support its “Matrix pour les collectivités” project.

On 11 September 2026, the first substantive deadline under the Cyber Resilience Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/2847, "the CRA") will come into effect. This Regulation entered into force on 10 December 2024, but it applies in stages, and this week’s date is the second of three stages. As from 11 September, manufacturers of products with digital elements placed on the EU market become subject to the reporting obligations set out in Article 14.

If your All Chats list has grown to the point where finding anything feels like work, you're not alone. A long, flat list of rooms and DMs doesn't scale — the important conversations get buried, the noise is always visible, and keeping on top of it all requires more effort than it should. Introducing sections!

Interoperability is the foundation of digital sovereignty; it’s the key ingredient in making sure the end-user stays in control, rather than the vendor. In reality, of course, most vendors want to be the one with the power. Vendors aim to lock their users in, and to build a proprietary walled garden as quickly as possible. This is why WhatsApp users can only message other WhatsApp users. Likewise, it’s Teams to Teams, Slack to Slack, Wire to Wire, Signal to Signal, Zoom to Zoom.

On 17 June Germany’s federal government and 16 Länder (states), led by The IT Planning Council, confirmed that ZaPuK will be a cornerstone of Germany’s Deutschland-Stack. The Deutschland-Stack (D-Stack) is Germany’s national sovereign technology platform designed to serve as a uniform, cross-governmental IT architecture.

We're pleased that Element has been recognised as a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multi-stakeholder initiative endorsed by the United Nations. To qualify as a Digital Public Good (DPG) a solution must meet a rigorous set of criteria. In particular open licensing, clear ownership, platform independence, strong documentation, privacy compliance and adherence to open standards.

Healthcare has always had its share of chronic conditions, but not all of them are clinical. For years healthcare communications have been trapped in paper-based systems, slow email chains and endless telephone tag. More worrying still, the creeping adoption of consumer-grade chat apps is now putting private patient data directly into Big Tech's hands - whose entire business models depend on harvesting it. Now there’s a prescription for change.