The French government has announced the full rollout of Visio, a domestically developed video conferencing platform that will replace Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other non-European tools across all state administrations by 2027.
The move is part of France’s strategic push to regain control over critical digital infrastructure and reduce reliance on foreign, particularly US, software vendors.
The formal announcement was made earlier today by David Amiel, Minister Delegate for the Public Service and State Reform, during a visit to the CNRS’s I2BC research facility in Île-de-France. He was joined by Stéphanie Schaer, director of the French Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM), which developed Visio, and Alain Schuhl, Deputy Director General of CNRS.
Visio has been under testing for the past year and already counts over 40,000 regular users. It is now being deployed to 200,000 public agents, with major institutions, including CNRS, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, Assurance Maladie, and the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP), among the first to adopt it in early 2026. CNRS alone will migrate its 34,000 employees and 120,000 affiliated researchers off Zoom by the end of March.
Visio is part of the Suite Numérique, a broader digital ecosystem of sovereign tools created to replace widely used services like Google Meet, Slack, and Gmail within the French public sector. These tools are accessible exclusively via ProConnect, the secure authentication system for public servants, and are not available to the general public or private companies.
On the technical side, Visio is hosted on the sovereign cloud infrastructure provided by Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, and certified under SecNumCloud by ANSSI, France’s national cybersecurity agency. The platform supports AI-powered meeting transcription using speaker diarization technology from the French startup pyannote, with real-time subtitle generation from AI research lab Kyutai expected to be added by summer 2026.
In addition to enhancing security, the shift is expected to reduce licensing costs. The government estimates savings of €1 million per year for every 100,000 users migrated away from paid services like Microsoft 365 and Zoom.
The strategy underscores France’s commitment to digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and concerns over foreign surveillance or service disruptions. By controlling the infrastructure that underpins internal communication, the government aims to protect sensitive data, scientific research, and strategic innovations from external exposure.
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