European public agency chooses Mattermost & Pexip for secure collaboration, replacing Skype for Business

This European government agency distributes retirement pensions, ensuring residents receive steady incomes when they leave the workforce. The agency has over 1,400 employees across headquarters, regional offices, and remote locations.

Searching for Skype for Business Replacement

Since its inception, the agency has relied on collaboration technologies to support its distributed team and fulfill its mission of ensuring financial security for the country’s retirees.

The agency used Skype for Business for over a decade to keep teams aligned and boost organizational productivity.

When Microsoft announced that they’d be replacing Skype for Business with Microsoft Teams — and that Skype for Business would be retired in July 2021 and reach end of support in October 2025 — the agency began looking for a new collaboration solution to avoid the risks of continuing to use the unsupported platform.

Moving away from legacy systems & increasing cyber resilience

The agency opted to use Skype’s deprecation as an opportunity to accelerate its digital transformation efforts, moving away from legacy systems and deploying next-generation collaboration tools that are more conducive to the modern world.

“We knew the right solution had to be easy to use and support efficient, secure, and compliant work, which matters more than ever in today’s fast-changing legal and technical landscape,” says the migration project lead.

As the agency narrowed down its criteria for a Skype for Business replacement, it settled on three key features: interoperability, future-proof architecture, and data sovereignty, which would enable it to protect sensitive financial data.

After surveying the market and studying their options, the agency ultimately chose to replace Skype with three tools:

• Mattermost, the secure, self-sovereign collaboration platform built for mission-critical work and compatible with Schrems II;
• Pexip, a Mattermost partner headquartered in Norway, makers of self-hosted voice and video conference solutions; and
• Collaboard, a Swiss-based software company that builds GDPR-compliant online whiteboarding and visual collaboration tools.

In May 2025, the agency officially launched its new collaboration suite, creating a strong foundation on which they can continue building as digital needs evolve. Together, the three tools have helped the agency increase cyber resilience by giving it more control over its infrastructure and letting it choose where mission-critical collaboration data lives.

“These are modern tools that not only support effective communication but also new, more asynchronous and sustainable ways of working,” the project lead continues.

Preparing for the future with a modern & adaptable collaboration stack

By moving away from an outdated collaboration platform — one built initially before the first iPhone was released — the agency has been able to future-proof its collaboration stack with a highly adaptable solution that can grow alongside the organization.

“What makes this solution powerful is how it brings the whole organization together into a shared learning process,” the project lead says. “It’s not a static tool — it adapts and improves with us, unlike the legacy systems we used before.”

With a centralized collaboration space serving as the glue that holds the organization together, the agency intends to continue its digital transformation journey by replacing other legacy systems with modern alternatives, putting it in an even stronger, more secure position to fulfill its mission.

“This is a milestone in the agency’s digital development,” the project lead concludes. “But it is only the beginning.”