Bad News First …
Today, HIFIS and the HZDR as the service provider have to announce that HIFIS’s Mattermost service is unlikely to be kept in our service portfolio any longer and needs to be replaced during the first half of 2026. The company behind Mattermost decided to restrict their free offerings and also deprecated the technology with which we were able to enable the login via Helmholtz ID. These changes are pretty daunting, because Mattermost has become one of our most widely used services in Helmholtz during the last years. Many Helmholtz members integrated Mattermost into their daily routine and we are aware of the fact that we can not just switch off Mattermost. Of course, we are looking for alternatives.
… Good News Next
At the moment we are talking to service providers in Helmholtz, collect ideas, evaluate alternatives and migration paths, to finally be able to make a well thought-through decision. There are a couple of promissing alternatives and in order to make the best possible choice, we join forces in Helmholtz to achieve that. At the end of this process we will be able to offer another chat solution to you before we might turn off Mattermost entirely. While we try to make the switch as smooth as possible, we can not guarantee that all data will be transferred to the new chat service, but we make this a priority. We will keep you informed about our next steps and also provide a roadmap as soon as this plan is complete. In the end, together we will say: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Strengthen the Resilience of the HIFIS Service Portfolio
Of course, this possibility and risk is not new to HIFIS. We are permanently facing business decisions made by companies who restrict access to free editions of open source software we are using. Due to these uncertainties, we are aware that we have to choose our offers wisely, in particular for mission-critical services. Recently, we started a pilot project to work on exit strategies for these critical services. Our pilot use case is GitLab. We are evaluating alternatives for our code hosting offers before business decisions are made by companies that might lead to a discontinuation of a service offer in HIFIS. Please refer to an associated talk held on the IT4Science Days 2025:
Strengthen Research Associations Through Exit-Strategies for IT Services
Team HIFIS Community on Mattermost
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