Authorities test open-source office suites as Microsoft alternative

In Thuringia, 1,000 workstations are scheduled to start using openDesk in September. The open-source office and collaboration suite will initially be tested in production there.

Schleswig-Holstein took the most visible early step: In autumn 2025, the state switched from Microsoft's Exchange email system to open-Xchange and simultaneously migrated around 80 percent of its administrative users from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania replaced Microsoft SharePoint with Nextcloud and also plans to phase out Office.

Other parts of the public sector are also trying out the alternatives. In Baden-Württemberg, around 85,000 teachers already use openDesk for email, lesson preparation and collaborative document editing. The Federal Employment Agency, the German Pension Insurance and the German armed forces are testing the suite as well; some small municipalities have reported their switch.

The deployments so far show open-source tools being used for email, lesson preparation and collaborative work on documents. Teachers, some small municipalities and federal agencies are among the users and testers to date.

The gap with the previous standard remains large. Nationwide, public agencies have so far subscribed to openDesk for around 200,000 users, around 40,000 more than in October 2025. That compares with around 5.5 million public-sector employees, most of whom work at a PC. The initial switches therefore show movement, but they have not yet resulted in Microsoft's widespread replacement.