The interview
Q: What is your name?
Hey I'm Clément Oudot, CEO of Worteks, a company with expertise in open source software development created in 2016 in France with around 15 employees today.
Q: What is your product?
We provide open source software integration of our own cloud solutions: W'Sweet: (collaborative suite), W'Opla (infrastructure/ container server setup with tools for image creation), W'IDaaS (authentication, directory, SSO). We operate these services ourselves as well and host them on our own servers.
Q: Is it SaaS? PaaS? IaaS? Other?
SaaS and Services
Q: What are the unique selling propositions of your product? Is your solution different or better than competing solutions?
We are a 100% open source software company without any proprietary services. Our applications run on French servers, data is stored in France, so there is no third party collecting any data.
Q: Which free and open source software solutions do you use?
We have integrated a range of free software solutions, for example our W'Sweet solution uses products from BlueMind, Nextcloud, Rocketchat, Jitsi, Big Blue Button. We're also maintainers of the LemonLDAP::NG project which we are using in all our products.
Q: Can you name users or clients of your solution? Preferably in the CAC40, DAX30, Fortune500, European governments?
We have a lot government and ministry customers, as well banks and insurance companies for which we also have to provide infrastructure support. Clients I can cite are Airbus, Amadeus, Capgemini, Axa and Thalès. We handle messaging for the city of Marseille for about 8.000 users and also provide a SaaS solution for French veterinarians which have about 30.000 active users. We also provide service to firefighters in three departments and are in the process of rolling out our solution to further departments. We usually benefit from companies requiring expertise or lacking competent staff for handling LemonLDAP::NG. This is where Worteks usually gets subcontracted.
Q: What European policies do you suggest to ensure sustainable development of your technology and its adoption?
We have the knowledge and technical skills in Europe, but our political system is not strong enough to endorse them (some steps are being made in France, but it is not enough). The GAFAM have US conventions to establish their hegemony and until we also come up with some form of protectionism for our European companies, we will have a hard stance, when it is actually logical that European taxpayers' money should remain within Europe.
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?
Orange is a big LemonLDAP::NG customer: and they have a policy to support community products. They contract framework lists Worteks as support for all international entities of Orange using LemonLDAP::NG and although this did not bring any new clients directly, many cities in France use the solution: Montpellier, Lille, Nantes, Rennes, Nevers, Villeurbanne and others.