Switzerland's Federal Chancellery and its Armed Forces Cyber Command are separately moving away from Microsoft 365 toward openDesk, a German-built open-source workplace suite covering email, calendars, documents and video conferencing. The Chancellery plans to run openDesk alongside Microsoft 365 for about 3,000 of 47,000 federal employees by the end of 2027, at an estimated cost of 9 million Swiss francs, while the military is proceeding faster on sensitive systems.
Switzerland's Federal Chancellery is spending 9 million Swiss francs to move 3,000 government workstations off Microsoft 365 tools like Outlook and Teams, adopting the open-source openDesk suite instead. The decision follows a successful pilot program called PoC BOSS, which tested the software with 172 federal employees who found it workable for standard office tasks, though large-scale video conferencing showed some limitations. The rollout is planned to be complete by the end of 2027, with potential to expand further across the federal workforce.
Following a proof-of-concept with 172 employees, Switzerland's Federal Council has expanded testing of the German open-source suite openDesk to 3,000 government workstations, about 7% of the federal workforce. The pilot, running alongside Microsoft 365, aims for full migration by end of 2027, while the country's Cyber Command plans to fully replace Microsoft 365 with openDesk by October 2026.
The Swiss Federal Chancellery is spending CHF 9 million to test the openDesk open-source suite as a replacement for Microsoft 365 across 3,000 federal employees, roughly 7% of the workforce, with migration targeted for completion by end of 2027. The pilot follows a proof-of-concept with 172 employees that rated document editing and email positively but flagged limitations in large-scale video conferencing, and it will run alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replace it immediately.
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