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Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

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Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#191

Post by wongarsu »

retired wrote: post #156

Is there a European alternative to Microsoft 365? Most platforms like Nextcloud focus on file storage, email, documents and video conference but don't do anything similar to the identity management, provisioning, policies and SSO that Office 365 provides. A national government is large enough to run their own Keycloak instance but a regional branch of government would be better off with having a SaaS for that. It wou…

Many governments have their own MSPs (managed service provider) who could host any open source software, just as they are likely in charge right now of many Microsoft admin tasks. And if the government doesn't have one but a branch office wants a regional branch wants a keycloak instance they can always get an MSP for that

I do like your vision of a unified full replacement version. But even just gathering everyone's requirements for that seems like a near impossible task that would take years. And the end result would almost certainly end in a mess that's too restrictive for some, unusuably unsecure for others, and have a set of apps that will always be slightly wrong and difficult to change. These huge top-down solutions rarely work well

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#192

Post by 202508042147 »

I know someone that works in the central government of an EU country and have persuaded her to talk to the IT department in the ministry where she works to try to move away from Microsoft products. The short answer: "It's not possible for us to move away from Microsoft". And it's not that they don't want to, but they have extremely low IT resources + the employees are very reluctant to make any change. Sometimes they introduce a new program, or update an older one and there's massive whining in the entire ministry. These public employees should really try to adapt more and understand that digital environments have become crucial for independence, privacy and self-reliance.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#193

Post by wolvoleo »

retired wrote: post #156

Is there a European alternative to Microsoft 365? Most platforms like Nextcloud focus on file storage, email, documents and video conference but don't do anything similar to the identity management, provisioning, policies and SSO that Office 365 provides. A national government is large enough to run their own Keycloak instance but a regional branch of government would be better off with having a SaaS for that. It wou…

You can always pick other components for those things. Many enterprises do this also because the included parts in M365 are usually pretty mediocre compared to AAA solutions that specialise in that part. For example dedicated MDMs are better than Intune. Dedicated IDPs are better than Entra AD. Dropbox is better than OneDrive, slack is way better than teams (to be fair, anything is better than teams :) )

The big benefit of the MS package is that you get it all for one price. And that it's integrated so you have less configuration. But they're not deal-breakers. That's why parties like Okta and MobileIron still exist. Airwatch was also really good but VMware screwed them up like they screw everything up.

But M365 is not the only game out there. Unless you're limiting yourself to wanting exactly what M365 is. Then it's only that yes.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#194

Post by ilikerashers »

rambojohnson wrote: post #171

Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability. my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should…

Europe has just been catastrophically slow in developing anything related to it's own tech infrastructure. Its doesn't back itself.

Given how poor it's responding to things like the Draghi report, I wouldn't anticipate success. Just more flailing around and working groups.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#195

Post by guerrilla »

wolvoleo wrote: post #187
steinvakt2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU chat control is also better than American government spying on American tech companies (which is effectively a kind of EU Chat Control, except its USA who gets to spy). Both are bad, but one is less bad.

True, at least the EU does it above board. No secret court backroom shenanigans. I'm still super opposed to chatcontrol but at least it's in the open for us to fight.

Yeah, I agree with you both. Lesser evils do exist. At least there's some pretense of democracy and not just spy on everyone without limit without telling anyone. If it wasn't for Snowden, it'd still just be us "conspiracy theorists". (Anyone remember the 90s?)

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#196

Post by lpcvoid »

202508042147 wrote: post #188
lpcvoid wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Nextcloud/OCIS/Owncloud for Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint) and Onedrive, there's Libreoffice/Collabora (and Onlyoffice, but that's russian...), there's Thunderbird for Email. Windows is absolutely replaceable also, of course, maybe even easier than the Office365 subscription mentioned above. The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and sh…

> [...] anymore after Trump. We shouldn't have waited until Trump, we had clear signs of distrust when the Americans were spying on Angela Merkel and other European officials [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...

Agreed. But Trump is the absolute last straw, and it seems some people needed that earthquake to finally wake up in the EU.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#197

Post by rconti »

lukan wrote: post #86
bradley13 wrote: post #80

That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. If we (Europeans) really mean it - and we should - the top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die. According to the CLOUD act, the US government can demand access to data from US companies, regardless of where that data is stored. That mus…

"I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this." Maybe because there is no drop in replacement of microsoft and microsoft dependant tools? So yes, one can (and should) build them. But the market right now is not offering this yet.

The best time to do this was ~2010 before all of the cloud lock-in stuff.

The second best time is now.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#198

Post by heraldgeezer »

lpcvoid wrote: post #102
lukan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this." Maybe because there is no drop in replacement of microsoft and microsoft dependant tools? So yes, one can (and should) build them. But the market right now is not offering this yet.

There's Nextcloud/OCIS/Owncloud for Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint) and Onedrive, there's Libreoffice/Collabora (and Onlyoffice, but that's russian...), there's Thunderbird for Email. Windows is absolutely replaceable also, of course, maybe even easier than the Office365 subscription mentioned above. The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and sh…

Okay... and what about Intune? (Device management)

Entra? (User management and policy)

Office 365 Exchange?

Excel? (Finance runs on custom Excel macros and sheets)

Teams?

Office 365 in general, security, DLP, MFA?

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#199

Post by embedding-shape »

tchalla wrote: post #181
usrbinbash wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. Transitioning every system wholesale at once, is not gonna happen. I rather have our governents and agencies do it step by step than not at all.

It won’t but it creates a sense of urgency.

Not exactly the best conditions for making good and measured choices, I'd prefer if we didn't add more urgency than what most of us (Europeans) feel already. Everyone already have it on their mind when making purchasing decisions now, no need to also make those people do rash decisions.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#200

Post by rconti »

csmpltn wrote: post #169
bradley13 wrote: post #80

That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. If we (Europeans) really mean it - and we should - the top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die. According to the CLOUD act, the US government can demand access to data from US companies, regardless of where that data is stored. That mus…

Have you ever even used OpenOffice? It's 50 years behind.

Honestly, I hadn't used Microsoft Office in 15 years, and it somehow went 20 years backwards in that time.
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