European countries have been growing increasingly wary of relying on Microsoft for critical government and public sector services. Concerns about data privacy, digital sovereignty, and potential governmental surveillance have led many to question the viability of depending on an American tech giant for sensitive infrastructure.
Many worry that dependence on Microsoft could leave them vulnerable to sudden service interruptions or the risk of sensitive data being accessed without consent.
This growing unease has already led Denmark to begin transitioning from Office 365 to LibreOffice, while the German state of Schleswig-Holstein recently abandoned Microsoft Teams and started the shift from Windows to Linux.
And now, another European region is jumping on the "Ditch Microsoft" bandwagon.
Microsoft Software is a No-Go
A translated version of the announcement by the city of Lyon.
The French city of Lyon has taken a major step toward digital sovereignty by officially starting a move away from Microsoft software. . The city is gradually set to replace Microsoft Office with open source alternatives like ONLYOFFICE and switch from Windows to Linux-based operating systems to reduce dependency on proprietary offerings.
Coinciding with this, they have launched the Territoire Numérique Ouvert (TNO), an open source collaborative platform developed with the Métropole de Lyon and the SITIV.
TNO integrates tools such as Jitsi for video conferencing, Nextcloud paired with ONLYOFFICE for document sharing and co-editing, Zimbra for email, Chamilo for online training, and Matrix for instant messaging.
According to the official statement, TNO is already being used by thousands of employees across several local governments in France. All its services are hosted in regional data centers located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region to ensure full control over public data and meet national digital sovereignty standards.
The project has received €2 million in funding from the Agence Nationale de la Cohésion des Territoires (ANCT).
💬 What do you think of this move? Do you expect more European countries to follow suit?
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