Switzerland's Federal Government Tests Open-Source Alternatives to Microsoft on 3,000 Computers (itsfoss.com)
- Reference: 0185481816
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/07/0128205/switzerlands-federal-government-tests-open-source-alternatives-to-microsoft-on-3000-computers
- Source link: https://itsfoss.com/news/switzerland-replace-microssoft-pilot/
> The target is to complete the migration by end of 2027... On September 3, 2026, the Federal Council published results of "PoC BOSS", a feasibility proof-of-concept involving 172 federal employees who tested the openDesk suite, a German open-source collaboration platform. During the proof-of-concept phase, core office tasks like document processing and email received positive assessments, while large-scale video conferencing still showed technical limitations. Based on the 'success' of the PoC phase with 172 employees, the pilot is now launched for 3,000 employees...
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> According to Matthias Stürmer, professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Microsoft's supremacy in public institutions poses three problems that are driving this migration. First is the risk of foreign access. US cloud legislation could expose Swiss government data to foreign authorities. Second is the risk to service continuity, as dependency on a single foreign vendor creates operational risk. The third risk is the escalating costs as proprietary licensing fees are rising with no Swiss leverage.
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> Switzerland's military cybersecurity unit, Cyber Command, is not waiting for the civilian pilot. It is [2]already poised to replace Microsoft 365 entirely with openDesk by October 2026. It is pretty much the same reason. Military doesn't want foreign governments accessing sensitive Swiss data.
The article notes that during the pilot phase, the new system runs in parallel with Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it. But the article's author speculates that "If the pilot is successful, we might expect the migration to continue on all the 54,000 workstations owned by the federal administrations."
[1] https://itsfoss.com/news/switzerland-replace-microssoft-pilot/
[2] https://cybernews.com/tech/swiss-army-microsoft/?ref=itsfoss.com
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up.
Reliability (Score:1)
Switzerland is taking reasonable precautions.
Under our current regime the USA can not be relied upon
on a day-to-day basis, let alone over the years.
That goes for our U.S. citizens as well as for foreign interests.
Rick Wilson, American Republican strategist said it well
just before Trump's first election:
"Everything Trump touches dies"
Events since then have proven him right.
Especially regarding the United States.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Trump is that he thinks he's some kind of genius that has the power to fix things.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, he is really good at breaking and messing up things. Seems almost like a super-power.
National security (Score:2)
Relying on proprietary USA software or services is a national security risk for all non-USA countries. So good for Switzerland.
I wish my country (Canada) would start taking digital sovereignty seriously, but our government is so far down the MSFT rabbit-hole that I don't hold out much hope we'll ever disentangle ourselves until the USA does something draconian and then we're really screwed.
There really isn't any point for Canada (Score:1)
Without having the ocean there isn't really a hell of a lot you can do if the United States becomes belligerent. You need to stop that from happening in the first place. And I think it's painfully obvious you can't rely on us to do it for you anymore.
Digital sovereignty is a good thing for Europe because they've got an ocean between them and America so if we go completely off the deep end by electing another Republican in 2028 (whether it's Trump or Vance doesn't really matter) they at least have some t
Re: (Score:2)
> Without having the ocean there isn't really a hell of a lot you can do if the United States becomes belligerent
Without having the ocean there isn't really a hell of a lot Ukraine can do if Russia becomes belligerent
Russia is a weak country (Score:2)
America seems weak because we still have some semblance of sanity holding us back from violence. But America absolutely has a production capacity that Russia cannot even dream of. We also have a population that's over twice the size.
The two are not at all comparable. Russia was broken by world War II and never recovered. America has a massive on tapped production capacity that could easily become a terrifying War engine. You won't be able to hold us off with drones. We could quite easily raise an army o
Re: (Score:2)
until ?
Re: (Score:2)
> Relying on proprietary USA software or services is a national security risk for all non-USA countries. So good for Switzerland.
> I wish my country (Canada) would start taking digital sovereignty seriously, but our government is so far down the MSFT rabbit-hole that I don't hold out much hope we'll ever disentangle ourselves until the USA does something draconian and then we're really screwed.
The Canadian government might choose to weigh up the risk (of being dependent on US software and infrastructure) against the cost of migration, but aside from the actual business case aspect of decision making, the Canadian government might choose an non-US option simply as a means of taking a stance.
The US better look into this too (Score:3)
Microsoft is only looking out for Microsoft. Heck, just a few months ago we found out that Microsoft was using "proxy techs" in China for DoD tech support. ALL governments need to rethink how deeply they want Microsoft, or any other closed source tech company, within their ranks.
Re: (Score:2)
And that is the real problem. All the crap Microsoft and and the US administration pulled was just the trigger that made it impossible to keep ignoring the problem. And not that the problem is not ignored anymore, things are happening.
On a related note, I still do not understand how Microsoft could have been so abysmally stupid as to block ICJ o365 business accounts. That triggered the whole thing and made it abysmally clear that their stuff cannot be relied on.
All-government access instead? (Score:2)
With OSS, doesn't every government have access to the source and potentially a backdoor to your data that it either discovered or planted?
Re: (Score:3)
1998 called and wants the [1]Halloween Documents [wikipedia.org] back. You're 2.5 decades late with that particular FUD talking point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
Re: (Score:2)
You are aware, that all major governments (including the Swiss one, where I personally know people) have access to Windows sources, right?
We actually looked at it (Score:3)
Installed it, looked at the components.
While it's technically open-source, to make it usable beyond a simple proof of concept, you need to pay for a lot of "pro" stuff that requires a license.
I have no idea what it costs, but I doubt it will turn out cheaper as Microsoft.
Currently, it does not look like it's multi-tenant. So you need a full installation for every customer.
Re: We actually looked at it (Score:3, Informative)
I remember looking at Linux for an American K-12 public school district about 15 years ago.
Yes, the base OS was/is free (as in beer), but, to manage all 1,500 desktops and laptops in the district required EITHER licensing (per desktop) a third-party tool to manage the systems similar to the way we managed Windows and Mac systems with Group Policy.
At the time we spent about $35/desktop for MS Windows and MS Office & Server CALs (MS Academic rate), the third-party tools were $25/desktop as I recall. So $1
Re: We actually looked at it (Score:1)
Typo, it should read:
> Yes, the base OS was/is free (as in beer), but, to manage all 1,500 desktops and laptops in the district required EITHER rolling-our-own management tools/suite or licensing (per desktop) a third-party tool to manage the systems similar to the way we managed Windows and Mac systems with Group Policy.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right in your statement but you don't manage 1,500 Linux/Unix stations like Windows that's why it was so expensive. There are tools for free to even manage a greater number of stations.
When you lock yourself in a proprietary system and tools then you are right that they don't work on other systems. It's not Linux that is restricting your use.
My kids grew up using systems no employer used. They grew up computer literate and today they have no issues using any computer even the ones employers use.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. On Linux you can automatize system administration very well with FOSS. Yes, you have to use different tools, but, for example, SSH-ing into a box with certificate-based authentication when it is up is trivial. Scripting that way is trivial. Even a doing a full installation (on top of a minimal one) this way is trivial. Doing updates this way is trivial. All with the security mind-set that UNIX was designed with from the start.
Now, if you want the same admin interface on Linux as you had on Windows,
Re: We actually looked at it (Score:2)
Perhaps this was quite unlike Windows in the 2000s, but today with automation like MS InTune and usage of powershell scripts the gap isn't there anymore. MSPs managing Mac, Windows and Linux endpoints see little difference in the headcount required to manage them, many of the popular MSP toolkits like NinjaOne for example support all three OSes, and AI can port custom automation scripts easily across platforms. Much like the term UNIX admin is no longer in use (Cloud engineers/DevOps/SRE etc are the title
Re: (Score:3)
'Core Suite' is fully open source and would cover most day to day needs of 'non-enterprise' users: files (Nextcloud), office editing (Collabora Online), email/calendar (Open-Xchange), chat/video (Element/Jitsi), project management, wiki, etc.
'Enterprise Edition' does add paid operational features:
>
> Automated user provisioning/deprovisioning and central rights management
> Audit trails and administrative dashboards
> Mail high availability/clustering and prioritised security patch channel
> Some proprietary add-ons from upstream vendors (all of whom have solid FOSS products) (e.g., Element Server Suite Pro features, Open-Xchange Dovecot Pro, Nextcloud Enterprise admin/audit/Guard)
On cost, [1]Schleswig-Holstein showed [comparethecloud.net] €15M/year licence savings vs a €9M one-off migration/infra investment, which sounds quite effective to me, but remember that cost is only one part of this stuff.
[1] https://www.comparethecloud.net/articles/european-government-open-source-programmes-compared
Re: We actually looked at it (Score:2)
The cost isnâ(TM)t what it costs today to operate. But what it will cost when Trump or his successor tells Microsoft to pull support for a country he decided he didnâ(TM)t like that day. Or has them install spyware. Trusting any US company with your critical infrastructure looks like a very stupid risk.