Several public sector organizations in the region are moving to open source digital workplace apps. The German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein is replacing Microsoft software with LibreOffice, Nextcloud, and Open-X-Change, while the city of Lyon in France, will replace Windows and Office with open-source alternatives. And the Austrian Armed Forces will reportedly deploy LibreOffice to 16,000 workstations.
Digital sovereignty is expected to grow as a priority globally, according to Gartner. By 2030, the analyst firm forecasts that more than 75% of all enterprises outside the US will have a digital sovereignty strategy that involves local or regional cloud usage.
Heightened interest in digital sovereignty will result in increased spending on local clouds and open-source applications, but the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are unlikely to be too troubled. These hyperscalers account for 70% of the IaaS, PaaS, and hosted private cloud market in Europe, according to a report by Synergry Research Group from July. US tech giants also lead in SaaS, with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace widely used by private and public sector organizations.
