Switzerland Replaces Microsoft on 3,000 Computers as Part of Digital Sovereignty Plan

The Swiss Federal Government has launched a pilot program to replace Microsoft 365 with open-source alternatives on 3,000 workstations, representing about 7% of the federal workforce.

The migration aims to complete by end-2027 and follows a successful proof-of-concept phase involving 172 employees who tested the openDesk suite, a German open-source collaboration platform.

According to Matthias Stürmer, professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH), Microsoft's supremacy in public institutions poses three problems: foreign access risk due to US cloud legislation, service continuity risk from dependency on a single vendor, and escalating costs with no Swiss leverage.