Case Study: Cobalt Speech achieves frictionless, secure networking with Tailscale

Cobalt Speech discovered Tailscale’s frictionless VPN solution

Cobalt Speech, a fully distributed speech and language technology company, needed a better way to securely access resources in AWS and on coworkers’ machines. Before Tailscale, the team relied on a legacy VPN, a single bottleneck-prone bastion host, and SSH port forwarding, which made access to EC2 instances, CI systems, and demos clunky, time consuming, and less secure.

With Tailscale, Cobalt Speech installed client software across permanent and ephemeral nodes and shared workstations, creating a single Tailnet for direct, secure access without port forwarding or a bastion host. Tailscale’s WireGuard-based VPN simplified collaboration, device management, and remote access, while features like MagicDNS and node sharing improved efficiency further. The result was a frictionless, easy-to-maintain network that the team quickly adopted and now prefers over legacy VPNs.

Cobalt Speech

Julie Sheffield

Chief Technology Officer