Within 10 months, the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism in Austria, took a large step away from Microsoft. It is not as hard as many people believe to slowly move away from big tech and become more and more digitally sovereign.

Using a hybrid approach, 1,200 employees of the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism in Austria have started uploading their documents to Nexcloud’s servers in Germany, using Nextcloud Talk instead of Teams or Skype, and even their new Nextcloud calendars were synchronised with their Microsoft calendars, so their history was not deleted. 

It is not as hard as many people believe it is, to slowly move away from big tech and become more and more digitally sovereign. On Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Copenhagen 22nd October, the German competitor of Microsoft Office Nextcloud presented their hybrid solution, where customers are replacing Microsoft services one by one. 

The main motivation for the ministry was to move away was Microsoft’s cloud storage, a US cloud. Apart from that, the ministry was happy with the Microsoft service. 

According to the Chief Information Security Officer Florian Zinnagl in the ministry, the implementation process went very smoothly and it only took 10 months all together.

In August 2024, the ministry clarified the legal issues and made a contract with Nextcloud. The next month they did a proof of concept. In January 2025, the communication process with all staff started, and in April this year, they went live. It is important to guide the emloyees through the process and include them on the journey.

It is best to start limited and then take one move after another, said Jos Poortvliet, co-founder of NextCloud and Director of Communications, who presented the solution with the company’s partner, Sendent, where Richard Marx is co-founder. 

Nextcloud is an open source alternative to US Big Tech, it has no access to any data at all, and it has 350 different apps customers can use. 

The Austrian example shows that migrating from big tech to Nextcloud does not mean starting from scratch and doing it all at the same time. It is a good first step, if you want to move away from Microsoft in the longer run. Which is certainly the ambition of the ministry. More Austrian ministries are about to follow in the footsteps of the Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism. 

According to NextCloud’s Jos Poortvliet, the ministry decided to have more freedom at the cost of a higher price, because they have to pay both Microsoft and Nextcloud for a while. Nextcloud is in itself cheaper than Microsoft, and if digital sovereignty becomes a legal requirement in Europe, he says, then the ministry is fully compliant.

Photo:  Jos Poortvliet, co-founder of NextCloud and Director of Communications (th left) Richard Marx, co-founder of Sendent, a NextCloud partner. Taken by Pernille Tranberg