Fujitsu Customers with Biodrug Design Accelerator (BDA) use Mattermost to power secure collaboration 

Fujitsu is an information and communications technology equipment and services corporation that’s one of the world’s largest IT service providers. Founded in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu has 124,000 employees working out of offices across the globe. (This information is current as of March 2024.)

Helping clients accelerate drug discovery and bring new products to market faster & more cost-effectively

As one area of focus, Fujitsu aims to be a key partner for pharmaceutical companies, “supporting them in total from research and development, clinical development, to quality control until market launch,” says Fujitsu’s development team.

Effective peptide drug discovery requires expertise and contribution from a diverse team of skilled professionals, including chemists, biologists, and computer scientists — making collaboration a cornerstone of success. 

“However, effective collaboration across diverse and highly specialized groups remains a difficult task,” the development team continues. “Drug designers are often forced to manage data across disparate software environments, trying to corroborate a hypothesis with laboratory results, ultimately slowing down the search for successful drug candidates.” 

On average, it takes anywhere between 12 and 15 years and $2 billion to bring a new drug to market. To accelerate that timeline and rein in expenses, Fujitsu recently unveiled a Biodrug Design Accelerator, a web-based design and collaboration platform that enables scientists at different stages of the drug design lifecycle to consolidate data in a single integrated solution. 

Protecting sensitive R&D data with a secure collaboration solution they could host on their own servers

While designing the accelerator, the team began looking for a collaboration platform that would enable individuals to share, discuss, and exchange information across multiple researchers in real time on the same platform.

“Pharmaceutical companies handle very sensitive information, such as research data, and place great importance on data security,” the team says, adding that some of the clients Fujitsu works with prefer on-premises solutions over SaaS tools because they provide more control over proprietary data and self-sovereignty. 

Mattermost, a secure collaboration hub for mission-critical work, satisfied this need.

Since the team was already familiar with Mattermost and it offers deployment choice — they knew they could host it on servers they control, something critical for several of its clients — they ultimately decided that it was the ideal messaging solution for the Biodrug Design Accelerator and connected the two platforms via Mattermost’s API.

What might’ve happened if the company hadn’t been able to use Mattermost for its accelerator?

“We would have either built our own chat system from scratch or looked for ways to implement it with the limitations of less customizable chat systems,” the development team explains.

Cross-team secure collaboration made easy with Mattermost, speeding up drug discovery

With Mattermost powering the accelerator’s communication, all drug discovery stakeholders can present, share, discuss, and exchange information in real time. 

By being able to see drug design information alongside messaging data on a single screen, operational efficiency has increased, according to the development team. Plus, whenever new team members join a project, they’re able to get up to speed by reading conversation history, accelerating the onboarding process.

Looking ahead, the development team plans to investigate Playbooks to see if they can use it to streamline repetitive workflows, increasing efficiency even more.

“I think it would be beneficial to use Playbooks to easily define workflows for approval processes in drug discovery and record discussions related to it,” the development team continues.

Due to its open source nature and its self-hosting capabilities, Fujitsu has complete control over Mattermost and can remedy any issues rapidly as they arise.

“One of the advantages is that being able to manage Mattermost ourselves makes it easier to investigate when a problem occurs,” the development team says, adding that team members refer to the platform’s robust documentation when they run into issues. “Whenever we have any questions, we’ve reached out to the Mattermost support team and received prompt responses.” 

Are you in the market for a collaboration solution for mission-critical work?

The development team recommends Mattermost to folks looking for a customizable messaging platform that can be self-hosted or delivered as a SaaS service through a private cloud.