Another European government agency is preparing to ditch Microsoft if needed

• Estonia isn't planning on ditching US Big Tech, but it will if it needs to
• 20% of each government workstation's costs go to Microsoft
• Migrating to a European alternative is a bigger job than it seems

Estonia's State IT Center (RIT) looks to be the latest European organization to move away from US tech giants in favour of supporting local alternatives.

While the RIT says it currently has no plans to fully abandon Microsoft, Google or Amazon, preparations to find a suitable alternative suggest it could be readying to migrate amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Director Ergo Tars also noted a pan-European decision to block American tech products from federal agencies could force it to rely on European technology, hence Estonia's proactive preparation.

Estonia prepares to move away from Microsoft, Google and Amazon

Despite claiming that the country's government has no plans to ditch Microsoft imminently, RIT does emphasize the costs involved with using Microsoft's services.

On the basis that one government agency workstation costs €2,000 per user per annum, around around one-fifth (€400) of that goes straight to Microsoft - which for a fleet of 15,000 workstations, is about €6 million per year.

But moving away isn't just about finding another suitable platform and cutting costs – established user familiarity would be challenged and a full-scale cloud migration could end up costing more than paying Microsoft's higher prices just for the transition to be effective.

Tars also criticized fully cloud services which can be affected by outages and downtime, indicating that hybrid and on-prem solutions are still needed to run in tandem to ensure full time operation.

But even if Estonia is only preparing for future shifts and isn't planning to fully migrate away from Microsoft, it won't be the only government exploring European alternatives. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein state confirmed it would be ending Microsoft's software deals, France's Lyon confirmed a shift from Microsoft software to open source alternatives, and Switzerland even warned of American SaaS companies' liabilities to the US government, slating proper data security.

Via The Register

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