Can Switzerland work without Microsoft?
From the public broadcaster to the Federal Railways and government ministries, Microsoft has become deeply embedded in Swiss organisations. Breaking that dependence can take years. Here’s why digital sovereignty is so difficult to achieve.
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Can Switzerland work without Microsoft?
At the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), our work depends on Outlook, Teams and Office. Replacing Windows – or even just one of Microsoft’s workplace tools – simply isn’t an option.
It isn’t just us. Microsoft says it has more than 50,000 business customersExternal link in Switzerland, including organisations in highly regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare. From the SBC to Swiss Federal Railways, from Siemens to federal administration, Microsoft has become essential across much of the country.
Last year, standing next to Swiss Economics Minister Guy Parmelin, Microsoft executives announced a $400 million (CHF325 million) investmentExternal link to expand the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure in Switzerland.
At the same time, Swiss officials say they want greater digital sovereigntyExternal link – meaning less reliance on technology controlled by foreign companies. That raises a question: if Switzerland wants greater independence, why do so many of its organisations rely on a single US company?
Microsoft vs open-source alternatives
When we asked the SBC’s IT managers why the broadcaster relies so heavily on Microsoft, the answer had little to do with ideology.
“We didn’t choose Microsoft because we love Microsoft,” says Martial Challandes, head of IT at the SBC.
For a company with thousands of employees, Microsoft offers standardisation, interoperability, and around-the-clock support. “You give employees the tools and they simply work,” he adds.
Open-source alternatives exist for some Microsoft products, including LibreOffice as an alternative to Office. As their source code is open, anyone can inspect, modify and adapt them, offering greater flexibility without licence fees. But organisations often have to take on more responsibility for operating these systems. The SBC uses some open-source software in its technical infrastructure, which most employees don’t interact with.
In this multi-part series, Swissinfo journalists Kristian Foss Brandt and Sara Ibrahim attempt to replace core technologies from major US tech companies in their daily and professional lives – including Windows, Android, Google services, cloud platforms and AI tools – with Swiss or European alternatives where possible.
The goal is to test whether digital sovereignty is realistic at the individual level and what this reveals about Switzerland’s broader technological dependence and the possibility of reducing it.
“When you have a problem with Microsoft, you call Microsoft. With open-source, you first have to understand the problem yourself,” says Nicola Marangoni, head of IT at RSI, the Italian-language branch of the SBC.
Both Challandes and Marangoni believe organisations underestimate the cost of supporting open-source software.
“The organisations that succeed are those that treat it as a strategic capability, not as a way to save money,” Challandes says. “Those that adopt open-source simply to cut costs often discover the hidden bill two years later.”
Replacing Microsoft with LibreOffice, Marangoni says, would be difficult because it affects almost every employee’s daily work.
“You would run into people who have worked with Office and its ecosystem for years and suddenly have to change,” he argues.
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In Switzerland ‘no trains would run’ without open-source
Many other firms operate similarly to the public broadcaster: they rely on Microsoft for employees’ tools, but use open-source software in the systems that keep their operations running.
“Without open-source, no trains would run,” says Peter Keller, who works on digitalisation and IT architecture for the Swiss Federal Railways.
Keller explains that critical Swiss railway infrastructure relies on Linux and on other open-source software, which have become the industry standard for the sector. “Open-source systems are the gears inside the watch that nobody sees.”
The Railways also develops some strategic software jointly with other European railway companies as open-source projects. Keller says this makes collaboration easier than if every organisation relied on proprietary systems. This collaborative development model has accelerated innovation in software that runs trains, he says.
Siemens followed a similar path decades ago. “You can’t innovate without open-source,” says Roger Meier, distinguished engineer at Siemens Switzerland.
While most employees still rely on Microsoft and other proprietary software for everyday work, more than 90,000 developers of the German multinational company collaborate internally on a software platform inspired by open-source communities.
“Before, every department worked in isolation. Today everyone can contribute,” Meier says. For him, collaborative coding is a little like going to a barbecue: “everyone has to bring something”.
‘Open-source is already everywhere.’ So why doesn’t everyone switch?
This style of open collaboration has allowed innovations that are everywhere today. Much of the modern internet was built on open-source technologies. Linux, an open-source operating system, powers most of the world’s servers. Open-source AI frameworks such as PyTorch are used even by companies like Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, which build their own AI tools.
“Open-source is already everywhere,” says Nicolas Christener, CEO of the Swiss company Adfinis, which provides open-source IT solutions globally. “When thousands of developers can collaborate freely,” he adds, “innovation happens much faster”.
Christener compares open-source to Lego bricks. Instead of buying a finished product, organisations can build exactly what they need. “Open-source means freedom of choice,” he says. “There isn’t one big company telling you what is or isn’t possible.”
Yet many organisations considering open-source alternatives face a difficult dilemma. “Should we pay 20% more for licences next year? Or should we invest in migrating away from Big Tech services?” says Pascal Stöckli, co-founder of Netzwerk SDS, a Swiss initiative promoting digitally sovereign solutions.
Proprietary systems often make switching expensive. The deeper they become embedded in an organisation, the harder and more costly it is to leave – a phenomenon known as vendor lock-in. For large organisations, both annual software licences and large-scale migration projects can cost millions of francs.
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This doesn’t mean organisations never switch suppliers, especially as prices climb. After Adobe raised its fees, the SBC replaced its creative software with lower-cost proprietary alternatives. The broadcaster retained Microsoft after negotiating lower licensing costs last year but declined to disclose the figures.
Security and support are also often cited as reasons to avoid open-source – because anyone can look at the code, some organisations may fear that hackers will find and exploit vulnerabilities.
Christener disagrees. When the source code can be independently audited, he argues, vulnerabilities are often easier to detect and fix. He also notes that many open-source companies, such as Adfinis, are beginning to offer enterprise-grade support, including 24/7 assistance.
Still, many organisations remain cautious. The Swiss Federal Chancellery told Swissinfo that the long-term sustainability of some open-source projects, especially those that are maintained by voluntary communities of IT experts, remains one of the main obstacles to reducing its dependence on proprietary software.
Rather than attempting radical overhauls, Christener advises organisations to replace one tool at a time – for example, swapping Microsoft Teams with an open-source collaboration platform such as Nextcloud Talk.
“Switching to open-source isn’t a sprint,” he says. “It’s a marathon that can take years.”
How one German State said goodbye to Microsoft
One European government is in the middle of this marathon.
The German state of Schleswig-Holstein has replaced Windows with Linux and Microsoft’s main workplace applications with open-source alternatives across much of its administration.
Initially the goal was to reduce licence costs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed the project into a question of national security. “We saw how dependent we had become in the energy sector – and we are just as dependent in the digital sphere”, Schleswig-Holstein’s Digitalisation Minister Dirk Schrödter told Swissinfo via email.
“Freedom, democracy and sovereignty increasingly depend on our ability to shape and control our own digital infrastructure,” Schrödter says.
The transition has taken around seven years, from early testing to the rollout across the administration. About 20% of workstations still need Microsoft licences for specialised applications, even if the goal remains full independence, Schrödter underlines.
The government says it has already saved more than €15 million (CHF13.85 million) in licence costs against an investment of €9 million for the migration and further development of open-source solutions.
“The path to digital sovereignty is long and challenging,” Schrödter says. “But it is achievable.”
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