The Risks of Not Replacing Skype for Business Before its End of Life
If your organization uses Skype for Business for collaboration, it’s time to start thinking about your next communication platform.
On Oct. 15, 2025, Microsoft will stop supporting Skype for Business. As a result, the platform’s performance issues, security vulnerabilities, and other bugs will no longer be fixed.
There’s still time to move to a new platform before Skype for Business is no longer supported. However, delaying this transition could expose your organization to significant risks. From operational disruptions to security vulnerabilities, here are five key risks your organization may face if you don’t replace Skype for Business before its end of life.
1. Operational disruptions
Continuing to use Skype for Business after its end-of-life date can cause significant operational disruptions. Without support from Microsoft, organizations face issues like service downtime, reduced performance, and compatibility problems with other tools. Together, these challenges can lead to delays in workflows, bottlenecks in communication, and reduced overall efficiency.
Choosing to continue to use Skype for Business puts your customer-facing teams most at risk; any communication disruptions can impact service delivery, damaging customer satisfaction and retention. At the same time, IT teams may also struggle to resolve issues without vendor support, causing them to spend more time fixing outdated software instead of focusing on more strategic projects.
2. Frustrated employees
Continuing to use Skype for Business after its support ends can lead to employee frustration and dissatisfaction, particularly among distributed teams that rely on collaboration tools to work from home, across multiple offices, or while at field locations. As the platform degrades over time, employees may encounter more frequent crashes, slow performance, and inconsistent functionality, which make it harder to collaborate with colleagues effectively.
Additionally, when tools don’t meet modern standards or integrate with other software, employees are forced to find manual workarounds. This not only wastes time and hurts morale, but it also increases the chances of errors.
By replacing Skype for Business with a modern, feature-rich secure collaboration platform, organizations can equip employees with the tools they need to do their best work while increasing engagement and boosting morale.
3. Security vulnerabilities
Without regular updates or security patches, Skype for Business becomes increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks once its end-of-life date passes. To increase their chances of success, hackers often target outdated software, exploiting known vulnerabilities to breach systems and access sensitive data. That being the case, organizations that continue to use Skype for Business put themselves at a higher risk of data theft, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.
For organizations managing confidential information, financial data, intellectual property, or critical infrastructure, such breaches can have profound impacts on the company’s reputation and — in an time when the average attack costs $4.88 million — its bottom line.
As new security standards and tools emerge, unsupported platforms like Skype for Business are left behind, leaving organizations ill-equipped to defend against evolving threats. By moving to a modern communication platform, organizations can protect against these risks.
4. Compliance issues
If you continue to use an unsupported platform like Skype for Business, you’ll incur significant compliance risks, particularly if you operate in a highly regulated industry. Compliance standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR often require organizations to use secure technology to protect sensitive data. Without vendor support or security updates, Skype for Business may no longer meet these regulatory requirements, which can expose your company to fines, audits, and other legal actions.
On top of this, outdated platforms often lack the reporting capabilities required to prove compliance during audits. By proactively adopting a modern communication platform designed to help organizations secure mission-critical work in highly regulated environments, your organization can ensure you remain compliant while protecting against penalties.
5. Increased costs
Continuing to rely on Skype for Business after its end of life can result in increasing costs over time. As the platform becomes outdated, IT teams may need to spend more time and resources troubleshooting issues and implementing temporary fixes. These costs can quickly add up, pulling resources away from other more important initiatives.
What’s more, security vulnerabilities and compliance failures associated with unsupported software may lead to fines, legal fees, and damage to customer trust, all of which can negatively impact revenue. Organizations may also face costs related to productivity losses as employees struggle to get things done with unreliable tools.
By moving to a modern collaboration solution, businesses can avoid these expenses while equipping their team with more reliable, feature-rich tools that support business growth.
Replacing Skype for Business with Mattermost
As a collaboration platform purpose-built for the most secure environments, Mattermost is an ideal Skype for Business replacement. Designed to integrate with the tools your team uses every day — including Microsoft Teams, Entra ID, and Office 365 — Mattermost also helps you unlock more value from Microsoft investments.
To learn more about why Mattermost is the ideal Skype for Business alternative, check this out.
