Netherlands Cancels Microsoft 365 Cloud Rollout, Turns to Open Source

Netherlands Halts Microsoft 365 Cloud Migration

The Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout, the government announced at the Open Source Summit Europe conference. The move came as the Linux Foundation released its 2026 State of Open Source in Europe report, which found that 94% of European Union organizations consider digital sovereignty important, with 61% calling it very important.

The administration had planned to move to Microsoft 365 in 2025, with the rollout to be completed by the end of 2026. About 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the public-cloud rollout in June. The government paused the plan in July, and the latest announcement replaces it with an on-premises and open-source approach.

Security and Sovereignty Concerns

The ICT assessment found that the chosen Microsoft 365 public-cloud design fell short on "information security, information processing and future-proofing." A central concern was preserving data confidentiality and control, particularly the sending of confidential documents through American servers rather than the government networks previously used.

The assessment also criticized the encryption setup. The proposed design relied on standard Microsoft encryption rather than Double Key Encryption, which would have given the administration greater control. End-to-end encryption would not have been enabled by default for one-to-one Teams calls and would have been unavailable for group calls under the selected configuration. The report identified vendor lock-in, reduced flexibility, digital sovereignty concerns and the absence of an adequate exit strategy as showstopping issues.

What Happens Next

For now, the on-premises email and calendar environment will still use Microsoft software, including Outlook. State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg wrote to Parliament that "in 2027, the provision for mail and calendar will be realized on-premises," followed by European open-source solutions for personal storage and collaboration later in 2027 and 2028.

No specific open-source programs have been chosen yet. Other Dutch government agencies are developing Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or DAWO, which replaces the Windows desktop with the Dutch Linux distribution NixOS. France's La Suite and Germany's openDesk are being considered as desktop suites, along with MijnBureau, a self-hosted suite combining Nextcloud, Collabora, Element and OpenProject.

A Wider European Trend

The Netherlands is not alone. The Swiss military and other agencies have announced moves to Linux and openDesk, following earlier shifts to Linux by governments in Austria, France, Germany and Ireland. Linux Foundation Europe general manager Thierry Carrez said "Europe has clearly heard the message on digital sovereignty," while LF board chair Nithya Ruff called digital sovereignty a need felt worldwide.

Sources: zdnet.com