Tele2, the Swedish network operator, has entered into a partnership agreement with Element.
The partnership will see Element being provided by Tele2 as part of a new service called Tele2 Collaborate (Tele2 Samarbete), a fully managed, secure and digitally sovereign communications service for the Swedish public sector.
Element will complement Tele2’s existing portfolio of products and services to address secure messaging and collaboration, and to combat shadow IT issues from consumer messaging apps.
Through Tele2 Collaborate, Element will be available both on-premise, and through a managed hosting service.
Element is seen as a particularly good fit for Sweden’s public sector. As a result of the Digital Collaboration Platforms project (dSam) and the eSam programme, Sweden’s public sector is keen to adopt open source and open standards to ensure data sovereignty and protection against vendor lock-in. Late last year, eSam cited Matrix - the open standard on which Element is built - as a recommended solution for real time communications.
As a part of Tele2 Collaborate, Element is seen as a natural Skype for Business (S4B) replacement for Sweden’s public sector, and an alternative to US-based Big Tech vendors. Element retains the data sovereignty and federation aspects for S4B, but also offers full end-to-end encryption, persistent chat, a modern interface and a more powerful feature set.
The demand for sovereign and secure communications is highlighted by The Future of Secure Communications, a commissioned global study conducted by Forrester Consulting. It shows that technology leaders want a communications platform that offers:
- End-to-end encryption (78%)
- Digital sovereignty (71%)
- Federation (69%)
The study also highlights that countries with a strong Work From Home (WFH) culture, such as Sweden, struggle with shadow IT. Globally, 74% of leaders say they experience challenges with securing internal communications due to the rise of hybrid work.
Perhaps even more concerning, 52% of leaders say their employees are commonly using unsanctioned, real-time messaging apps when working with people in other organizations introducing a host of serious risks, including noncompliance, eavesdropping, data loss or exposure, lack of admin controls, and reputational concerns.
Tele2 will provide Element as a managed service using Element Server Suite (ESS), the advanced server-side platform that includes a range of enterprise-grade functionality for large-scale deployments such as support for Single Sign-On and access management, auditing and moderation.
ESS includes Long Term Support (LTS), which ensures Tele2 has a stable and reliable backend on which is base its hosted service. LTS is complemented by continuous security updates to ensure the backend is well protected against emerging threats.
