Austria's Military Ditches Microsoft Office for LibreOffice Over Digital Sovereignty Concerns
The Austrian Armed Forces have replaced Microsoft Office on approximately 16,000 workstations with LibreOffice. The decision was not driven by cost savings, but rather a requirement for digital sovereignty and resilience in case of external service outages or cloud connectivity issues.
The exploration of alternative office suites began in 2020 as the military organization sought to address concerns about relying on cloud-based services. A key consideration was whether essential applications could be run entirely on-premises without connection to external cloud services.
The decision to adopt LibreOffice was made at the highest level within the Ministry of Defense and involved a gradual migration process that began with voluntary adoption in 2023 and became mandatory for internal collaboration by December 2024.