Switzerland is paying $11 million to stop using Outlook and Teams

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Editor's take: Switzerland is joining a growing list of European countries that no longer want to do business with Microsoft and other US IT giants. The federal government has already begun ditching Microsoft's productivity tools in favor of open-source alternatives, and the country's military authorities are moving even faster with the transition.

Federal authorities of the Swiss Confederation recently launched a pilot program to replace Microsoft 365 tools with open-source alternatives. The Federal Chancellery's plan calls for investing 9 million Swiss francs (more than $11 million) to replace Redmond's productivity software with the openDesk suite on 3,000 machines, but it could eventually expand to a significantly larger number of workstations used by federal employees.

The pilot launched earlier this month, when authorities in Bern shared the results of a proof-of-concept program called "PoC BOSS." The program was designed to test the switch from Microsoft software with 172 federal employees, who used openDesk in place of Outlook, Teams, and other tools included in the Microsoft 365 offering.

openDesk was designed by the German Centre for Digital Sovereignty to provide a customizable office and collaboration suite focused on digital sovereignty and security. The Microsoft 365 brand now includes Windows enterprise licensing and additional management tools, but the Swiss plan will reportedly focus only on the platform's productivity tools for the time being.

The Swiss Federal Council deemed the results of the PoC BOSS pilot a success. Employees were able to comfortably perform traditional office tasks such as document processing and email, while "large-scale" video conferencing was still affected by some technical limitations compared with Microsoft Teams.

In any case, the Swiss government has decided to go ahead with its switch-off plan. By the end of 2027, 3,000 federal workstations should be completely free of Microsoft Office tools thanks to openDesk's custom productivity solutions. The plan will affect just 7% of the federal workforce, but Switzerland's entire fleet of 54,000 computers could eventually follow suit.

Switzerland's push for digital sovereignty has been underway for a while. In 2024, Bern enacted the EMBAG law to push public authorities toward open-source software solutions. And while civilian agencies are still working with pilot programs, the country's military is moving much faster to replace Microsoft software with FOSS tools.

At this point, Switzerland's Cyber Command should complete its migration from Microsoft 365 to openDesk by October 2026. According to Bern University professor Matthias Stürmer, overreliance on Microsoft products is detrimental to data protection efforts. Foreign governments, including the US, could potentially force Redmond to provide access to Swiss citizens' files. Meanwhile, licensing fees and subscription costs continue to see massive price increases every year.

Replacing Microsoft 365 with open-source alternatives might be the right approach to solving the sovereignty problem, but plans could eventually change. Replacing traditional software tools on aging IT systems is no easy "plug-and-play" task, as some users have remarked. The German city of Munich even tried to move from Windows to Linux in 2004, but eventually returned to the old operating system in 2017.

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Switzerland is paying $11 million to stop using Outlook and Teams

 

[Kashim]

This is excellent news. The entire world needs to move away from American companies, American products, and the American dollar. Once America is no longer "too big to fail" then we'll see how much their brain dead politicians are willing to run their mouths and antagonize the rest of the world with their ridiculous nonsense like extortion tariffs and threats of economic sanctions.

Also, I can't wait to see what happens to America when their current 40 TRILLION dollar debt explodes to 100+ TRILLION in the next decade and they're unable to pay the interest rate on it, considering they're already paying over a TRILLION dollars a year in interest already. The solution to just keep printing more money and increasing inflation isn't something they can keep doing forever.

 

[yRaz]

This is excellent news. The entire world needs to move away from American companies, American products, and the American dollar. Once America is no longer "too big to fail" then we'll see how much their brain dead politicians are willing to run their mouths and antagonize the rest of the world with their ridiculous nonsense like extortion tariffs and threats of economic sanctions.

Also, I can't wait to see what happens to America when their current 40 TRILLION dollar debt explodes to 100+ TRILLION in the next decade and they're unable to pay the interest rate on it, considering they're already paying over a TRILLION dollars a year in interest already. The solution to just keep printing more money and increasing inflation isn't something they can keep doing forever.

I hate to say it as an American but the current system needs to fail. Housing is something even more ridiculous because everyone says there house is worth a $1,000,000 but no one has any money to buy it. A big problem with this is the "delisted" homes in my home city of Pittsburgh. We have entire ghost neighborhoods surrounding the city and they're all owned by the same 3 investment firms who built all the "luxury apartments" in 2010. They're creating an artificial shortage to keep prices high and expecting people making $15/hr to pay $2000/m for a 1bedroom apartment. Then you see the tax breaks these people get because they're financing the properties and actually get to write them off as losses since they aren't being rented.

And that's just one of the systemic issues that the American system promotes and then blames workers for not being able to afford living in the world they created.

 

[Squid Surprise]

This is what we call “political posturing”… once the current furor dies down, they’ll come crawling back to MS…

 

[Theinsanegamer]

This is what we call “political posturing”… once the current furor dies down, they’ll come crawling back to MS…

Just like Germany did 15 years ago.

This is excellent news. The entire world needs to move away from American companies, American products, and the American dollar. Once America is no longer "too big to fail" then we'll see how much their brain dead politicians are willing to run their mouths and antagonize the rest of the world with their ridiculous nonsense like extortion tariffs and threats of economic sanctions.

Also, I can't wait to see what happens to America when their current 40 TRILLION dollar debt explodes to 100+ TRILLION in the next decade and they're unable to pay the interest rate on it, considering they're already paying over a TRILLION dollars a year in interest already. The solution to just keep printing more money and increasing inflation isn't something they can keep doing forever.

That's great. I think we should go further. We should stop being the world police, and the world's navy. We should withdraw all our armed forces and let the rest of the world fight among themselves for control. May the fittest win!

 

[mbk34]

The solution to just keep printing more money and increasing inflation isn't something they can keep doing forever.

They had gotten away with it because US treasury bonds (a form of loan to the American government) were seen as a safe investment. That's no longer the case and no-one wants to buy them anymore. Another way America created demand for dollars was the petrodollar but Trump's Iran war is now making countries look at alternatives. Without the demand for US Treasuries or petrodollars then America has to pay it's debts from it's own pocket but unfortunately it's debt repayments are currently more than it's GDP - that's a bit like earning $100k/year but having mortgage payments of $120K/year. You can see why other countries are alarmed. Countries are also moving their gold deposits out of America because they no longer see America as a safe place.

 

[GABulldog]

If it saves them money in the long run, more power to them. You'll have some compatibility issues with some programs but in the end it will all work out.

 

[Vanderlinde]

If it saves them money in the long run, more power to them. You'll have some compatibility issues with some programs but in the end it will all work out.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/202608...attack-after-tax-data-of-678-000-users-stolen

Yeah we see how that worked out.

 

[mbk34]

We should stop being the world police, and the world's navy. We should withdraw all our armed forces and let the rest of the world fight among themselves for control.

In the past year America has kidnapped the leader of one oil rich country. It has killed the leadership and spiritual leader of another oil rich country. It is ally to a country engaged in genocide and befriends their leader even though he's a wanted war criminal. It has been killing the citizens of another country with no trial or due process. It has threatened a number of other countries some of which were allies. You have effectively stopped the economies of a number of countries around the world because of a war you started and that serves absolutely no purpose. You have started trade wars with numerous countries. Who do you think the world perceives as terrorists at the moment?

May the fittest win!

I assume that would be Iran then?