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Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

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41–50 of 112 posts

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#41
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think from an efficiency standpoint it makes sense to contract out to bigger players. Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free. The problem of course is that using someone else's proprietary, closed-source code makes you beholden to them. That's a problem for consumers but it's an even bigger problem for sovereign nations. Would be a great out…

>Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free. If that were true, then all these government IT projects from these infamous consultancies would all come in-time and under budget, but that's never the case, because every government wants things completely different than the other government, so it's never a just a copy-paste, fire-and-forget type of…

On time and under budget is relative to what you set the budget and deadlines to in the first place. If these companies had to rewrite Excel from scratch for every client I guarantee you the budgeted cost would be a lot higher (and they'd probably still go over that figure).

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Correct title would be Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos. From the article: > The implementation was carried out in partnership with Atos Austria, which worked alongside Nextcloud's team to ensure the platform met the ministry's legal, technical, and organizational requirements. So yes, while Atos seems to have been the contractor (?), the end result is that the title is correct, they've replaced whate…

>And I'm guessing more people are likely to have heard about NextCloud before while probably not heard about Atos before, unless you're Austrian You don't need to be Austrian for that. Atos is a pretty infamous IT services provider that operates in all of Europe and has the same issues as all such service providers like Accenture, Cognizant, Capgemini, Wipro, IBM, NTT Data, etc, and so far I haven't see ONE SINGLE CA…

> So then why not have the same for IT infrastructure instead of outsourcing it to all these parasites?

That exists already (and has for a long while): the Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ, https://www.brz.gv.at/en/). They do a lot of public facing government websites and portals. If you lived in Austria, there’s a good chance that you’ve used at least one of them. The question is, why haven’t they been tasked with this migration?

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#43
Coming after the Austrian military ditched MS Office (365, Copilot, whatever it's called now) for LibreOffice [0]. Similar stuff going on in Denmark and to some extent in Germany [1]. Way to go!

[0] https://news.itsfoss.com/austrian-forces-ditch-microsoft-off...

[1] https://cybernews.com/tech/microsoft-why-germany-open-source...

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#44
post #26

Has Nextcloud gotten to a point where it truly competes with Google Docs? Because every time I looked at it, it didnt look like it had feature parity. Being able to edit documents with others is one feature I want out of any alternatives that I can self-host.

>Being able to edit documents with others is one feature I want out of any alternatives that I can self-host. CryptPad just seems more secure compare to Nextcloud.

Why?

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#45

Has Nextcloud gotten to a point where it truly competes with Google Docs? Because every time I looked at it, it didnt look like it had feature parity. Being able to edit documents with others is one feature I want out of any alternatives that I can self-host.

I just want a OK spreadsheet experience I can use from the web, and host myself in my home. How does whatever Nextcloud offer for spreadsheets compare to Google Sheets?

Nextcloud editors use Collabora Online, which is apparently a fork/derivative of LibreOffice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabora_Online

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#46
post #44
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being able to edit documents with others is one feature I want out of any alternatives that I can self-host. CryptPad just seems more secure compare to Nextcloud.

Why?

It has crypt in the name

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#47

Correct title would be "Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos". I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websites, like the high quality ones Denmark or UK have, instead of just outsourcing everything government IT related to politically connected publicly traded consultancies like Atos, Kapsch or T-Systems, which just screams of corruption and cronyism, things Austrian…

True the UK has some decent government websites, but those were against a wider trend of huge government spending on all the well-known big tech firms.

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#48

Correct title would be "Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos". I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websites, like the high quality ones Denmark or UK have, instead of just outsourcing everything government IT related to politically connected publicly traded consultancies like Atos, Kapsch or T-Systems, which just screams of corruption and cronyism, things Austrian…

The dependency is much weaker in this case. Finding somebody else to manage/host Nextcloud is easy while using MS Office without Microsoft is impossible.

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free. If that were true, then all these government IT projects from these infamous consultancies would all come in-time and under budget, but that's never the case, because every government wants things completely different than the other government, so it's never a just a copy-paste, fire-and-forget type of…

On time and under budget is relative to what you set the budget and deadlines to in the first place. If these companies had to rewrite Excel from scratch for every client I guarantee you the budgeted cost would be a lot higher (and they'd probably still go over that figure).

Nobody suggested rewriting Excel or even customising libre office. These projects are often ERPs which get customised to the client's requirements. Chaos and ballooning costs often follow for all the usual reasons.

Re: Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of Nextcloud

#50
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the feature set you're looking for. My nextcloud instance is basically online OpenOffice apparently. It doesn't match Google Docs in speed, responsiveness, UI or UX, and it costs me like $18/month to run, but it seems relatively light-weight. There's no idiotic gemini crap or a pop-up begging me to try it though, and all my data is my own. I'm not the Austrian government but that's the feature s…

Hetzner offer managed next cloud for 5 euro with 1tb storage. 13 euro for 5tb.

I started using this and overall quite good but with very minor caveats...

* My part of the world is not adjacent to Germany (where this paid offering is hosted)...so there is a little latency. But not nearly as bad as I expected.

* While file sharing and syncing and other basic stuff is included, the equivalent of online collabora (or whatever the online office suite is called) is not included and you would have to self host it...but hetzner state this in their relevant knowledge base webpages.

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