How LAIKA uses Mattermost to create award-winning animated films

Making award-winning stop-motion animated films is a complex, time-consuming process. 

To illustrate, LAIKA—an animation studio based in Hillsboro, Oregon—has released several feature-length films since its 2005 inception, including Coraline, The Boxtrolls, and Missing Link. During peak production periods, the company has more than 550 employees working out of its headquarters and also employs a team of contractors that is spread out across the world. 

LAIKA had been relying on email for most of its communications, which made it hard to keep everyone on the same page. Seeking a better way forward, the company started using Jabber, a messaging tool built by Cisco. The platform fell short for a few reasons—it didn’t meet user expectations and it required too much IT maintenance. Still, LAIKA’s experiment with Jabber proved that messaging was the right solution to their communication challenges.

Shortly thereafter, the animation studio began searching for a different messaging platform that would meet their needs. After looking into Slack and some other options, they eventually settled on Mattermost; the ability to self-host their deployment was of particular interest to the LAIKA team.

“Security is a top priority for LAIKA, and Mattermost’s self-hosted solution helps us keep our sensitive data and intellectual property secure,” explains David Rowe, manager of IT systems support at LAIKA.

Due to Mattermost’s intuitive design, LAIKA’s employees quickly became productive on the platform. According to Rowe, users need “little or no support from IT”—a win-win for both employees and admins. Mattermost has also reduced the IT team’s incident response times. It also reduced reliance on email and improved communication and collaboration across the organization.

“Mattermost has saved us time and money while increasing user happiness,” Rowe concludes.

To learn more about LAIKA’s journey to a modern and secure messaging platform, why they chose Mattermost over Slack, and how the company has benefited from their decision, read the full case study.