Mural empowers digital collaboration at scale with MongoDB Atlas through the Microsoft commercial marketplace

Mural is a leading visual collaboration platform that helps enterprise customers power ideation, decision making, cross-functional alignment, and more. Its platform is built across Microsoft Azure and uses MongoDB Atlas for data distribution and mobility. MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed developer data platform designed for building modern applications on Azure. MongoDB Atlas for Azure empowers developers across multiple code languages like Java, Node.js, and Python while supporting integration with innovative and scalable Microsoft Cloud offerings and security features. The two companies have worked together for years and in 2022 moved their procurement and purchasing process to the Microsoft commercial marketplace.

Transforming how companies collaborate

Mural is focused on helping transform the way people work and how teams collaborate. Since 2011, it has been a trailblazer in modern work, creating solutions to empower people to work better together—no matter where they are. Mural’s platform facilitates product strategy and planning, immersive workshops using agile and design thinking methodologies, sales and consulting engagements, research and design, and other impactful use cases for enterprise teams. Far more than a whiteboard solution, its suite of services, products, and templates change how people can collaborate powerfully from anywhere. It’s also underpinned by Azure, which has helped the company scale efficiently and offer its customers a highly secure cloud.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shift of organizations worldwide to remote and sustained hybrid work spurred a massive demand for products like Mural and Microsoft Teams. Mural’s “land and expand” product strategy hinges on integrating with larger platforms like Microsoft 365. As Teams usage swelled to 270 million active users, Mural also experienced a 17x increase in new users in 2020. Mural’s integration with Microsoft Teams allows users to incorporate a shared digital canvas into any existing workflow in Teams with drawings, diagrams, digital sticky notes, images, and more. For Mural, integrations like this help generate new sales while simultaneously lowering its customer acquisition cost and reaching new markets.

Moving to MongoDB Atlas

Along with the increased demand, Mural needed to find a new solution that could support its data usage needs while being scalable, reliable, and adaptable. Mural turned to MongoDB Atlas on Azure in 2020 because of the unstructured nature of its application data and multitenant databases. “Working with MongoDB Atlas has enabled us to build faster, ship faster, and ultimately provide more expeditious value to our customers,” says Guido Vilariño, Director of DevOps at Mural.

The working partnership between Mural and MongoDB has also been very collaborative in nature. MongoDB has worked closely with the Mural team to iterate on unique customer offerings where specific and advanced encryption is required, on data residency requirements, database partitioning, and working with architects and core services teams to provide strategy around database performance to improve customer outcomes.

“Throughout the past two years of massive growth, we’ve been able to keep up with demand while running with a relatively small infrastructure team,” says Rebecca Campbell, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Mural. “This has helped other engineering teams focus on refining Mural solutions, ultimately leading to better experiences for our customers.”

The commercial marketplace: Joining forces for a more powerful partnership

In 2022, Mural began closely examining its Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment and how to get the most out of its spend. After working with both Microsoft and MongoDB, Mural made the strategic decision to move its transaction to the commercial marketplace.

Mural credits the consolidated billing as a key benefit but also the ability to buy with confidence during uncertain economic times. Campbell explained that when it came time to renew its Atlas contract, Mural was unsure of how big to go, but receiving nearly $50,000 in Azure credits helped offset the risk.

“From an economic perspective, it all worked out and everything fell into line,” notes Vilariño. “We were able to get a better discount from Microsoft, receive credits for the deals, and streamline the business side of transactions.”

Mural has the dual role of also being a partner in the commercial marketplace. In 2022, Mural received the Apps and Solutions for Microsoft Teams Partner of the Year Award. Mural’s integration with Teams and availability in the commercial marketplace help generate sales that provide opportunities to land and expand the Mural solutions.

“If you look at the software landscape today, everyone wants to stitch together all of their different software solutions with whatever platforms they’re on,” says Campbell. “So, when you can build a really rich partner ecosystem, the value proposition of your business is being built outside of itself. It makes what you bring to the table so much larger and more powerful.”

Much of that rich partner ecosystem is due in part to the maturation and expansion of both the Azure portal and the commercial marketplace. “As more and more first- and third-party products and services come together through the Azure portal that also tie to the commercial marketplace, customers—like Mural—get a better experience,” says Alan Chhabra, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Partners and APAC Sales for MongoDB. “The commercial marketplace isn’t just a procurement vehicle—it’s becoming a way for developers to determine the best products to integrate in their stack.”

With different listing options, trial offers that automatically convert to paid, private offers, and custom pricing, partners and customers can connect in more mutually beneficial ways and evolve their businesses together. Through the commercial marketplace, Mural is building next-generation solutions with MongoDB Atlas and Azure to help teams collaborate better and smarter.

For more information about Mural, visit: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/web-apps/WA104381626?exp=ubp8&tab=Overview

For more information about MongoDB and Atlas, visit: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/mongodb.mongodb_atlas_self_serve_prod_2022?tab=Overview 

For more information about the commercial marketplace, visit: https://azure.microsoft.com/partners/marketplace/

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