A sovereign, user freindly and collaborative platform to replace Microsoft Teams

Created following the 2014 territorial reform, Occitanie is an administrative region in France that encompasses the former Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées regions. It consists of 13 departments and has over 6 million inhabitants. While its headquarters is in Toulouse, Montpellier, the second-largest regional city, retains several administrative functions.

Replace Teams with a sovereign, modern and ergonomic platform

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the Region of Occitanie to urgently adopt remote working tools. It initially chose Office 365, including Teams, for collaboration. To reduce its dependence on Microsoft (due to rising costs and concerns about the U.S. Cloud Act) and align with the French government's "cloud at the center" directive, Occitanie sought to replace its current Office 365 tools (Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive) with a sovereign, modern, and user-friendly platform.

The project involved 4,000 region employees and approximately a hundred external users and aimed to:

• Promote cross-functional collaboration and cooperation


• Enhance collaboration through user-friendly tools


• Foster collaborative project development


• Facilitate unified access to information for all employees

A sovereign, comprehensive, interoperable solution with a proximity support

Occitanie's primary criterion was selecting a sovereign solution with SecNumCloud hosting to retain control over data storage and reduce reliance on a U.S. provider. The region also sought a comprehensive solution covering all collaboration needs (project management, messaging, document storage, co-editing, note-taking, chat, etc.) and facilitating collaboration and project management with numerous external partners. eXo Platform met these requirements and offered the ability to integrate external tools, such as a chatbot or calendar synchronization, in the future.

Additionally, Occitanie was attracted to eXo Platform's open-source nature, which ensured interoperability. The region plans to incorporate third-party tools into the collaborative platform as part of its future plans.

Strong support for training and structuring collaborative spaces

The first phase of the project, running from March to June, aims to transfer all data from Teams to the eXo platform. Throughout this phase, eXo Platform provides extensive support to the project team by creating training materials and conducting webinars. This enables the 180 collaborative space managers to enhance their skills. Those most comfortable with the new platform can independently follow tutorials.

During this phase, eXo also assists the project team in structuring collaborative spaces by departments, services, projects, and communities. To date, over a hundred spaces have been created.

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