- Estonia has no plans to drop US Big Tech, but it will if necessary
- 20% of each state workstation’s cost goes to Microsoft
- Migrating to a European alternative is a bigger job than it seems
Estonia’s State IT Center (RIT) appears to be the latest European organization to move away from US tech giants in favor of supporting local alternatives.
While RIT says it currently has no plans to completely abandon Microsoft, Google or Amazon, preparations to find a suitable alternative suggest it could be ready to migrate amid rising geopolitical tensions.
Director Ergo Tars also noted that a pan-European decision to block US technology products from federal agencies could force it to rely on European technology, hence Estonia’s proactive preparation.
Estonia is preparing to move away from Microsoft, Google and Amazon
Despite the claim that the country’s government has no plans to ditch Microsoft immediately, RIT emphasizes the costs associated with using Microsoft’s services.
On the basis that a workstation from public authorities costs €2,000 per user per year, around a fifth (€400) of that goes directly to Microsoft – which for a fleet of 15,000 workstations is around €6 million per year.
But moving away isn’t just about finding another suitable platform and reducing 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 to make the transition effective.
Tars also criticized full 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 operations.
But while Estonia is only preparing for future shifts and not planning to migrate away from Microsoft entirely, it won’t be the only government exploring European alternatives. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein confirmed it would end Microsoft software agreements, France’s Lyon confirmed a shift away from Microsoft software to open source alternatives, and Switzerland even warned about US SaaS companies’ obligations to the US government, planning for proper data security.
Via The register
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