Case Study: Heidelberg University keeps research teams connected and informed with Mattermost

Heidelberg University keeps research teams moving forward with Mattermost

Heidelberg University's Electronic Vision(s) research group at the Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics faced a significant challenge in keeping its large team aligned while building the complex, custom BrainScaleS neuromorphic computing system. Their previous real-time chat solutions lacked critical features and did not provide the data control they required, hindering the communication essential for their groundbreaking work. To address this, they implemented the self-hosted Mattermost platform.

By deploying Mattermost, the group created a central hub that integrated with their CI/CD pipelines, code review, and hardware monitoring systems like Grafana via webhooks. This solution provided seamless communication for over 100 users, enabled a smooth transition to remote work during COVID-19, and automated critical alerting to quickly identify hardware and software errors. The measurable results include over 550,000 searchable posts and the successful use of Mattermost for large-scale conference collaboration. Mattermost provided the team with complete data control and open source flexibility, which has led to its adoption by other research groups at the university.

Heidelberg University

Sebastian Schmitt

Particle Physicist