Synopsis
France is migrating 2.5 million government workstations from Microsoft Windows to Linux, citing a need for control over data and strategic decisions. This move mirrors India's earlier adoption of domestic software like Zoho Mail and its document suite. European nations are increasingly prioritising "digital sovereignty" due to geopolitical concerns and reliance on US technology.Listen to this article in summarized format
"We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, and risks we do not control," said French budget minister David Amiel.
India had made headlines for a similar move last year. In late 2025, union minister Amit Shah posted on X that he is switching to Zoho Mail, the work suite developed by homegrown software company Zoho. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced he was moving to Zoho's documents suite. The education ministry followed suit, issuing a directive mandating the use of the Zoho Office Suite for all official documentation across its departments. Over 1.2 million email accounts of central government employees were migrated to Zoho, with data stored in India.
For Zoho, a privately held company valued at approximately $12 billion that gets most of its business from overseas clients, this was a major endorsement of its enterprise services and its standing as a viable domestic alternative to Microsoft and Google.
In France, too, the driving force behind the decision was geopolitical. Lawmakers and government leaders across Europe are growing more aware of their over-reliance on US technology.
According to a report, India spent Rs 1,200 crore on foreign software licences in 2025 alone. These are recurring payments, mainly to American companies for the right to use their software. As trade tensions with the US rose through 2025 and the DPDP Act came into the picture, the urgency of a domestic software alternative was felt.
The switch will start with the French government’s digital agency, DINUM.
Europe's push
In February, civil servants in France ditched Zoom and Teams for a homegrown video conference system. Soldiers in Austria are using open source office software to write reports after the military dropped Microsoft Office.
The German state of Schleswig-Holstein migrated 44,000 employee inboxes from Microsoft to an open-source email programme last year. It also switched from Microsoft's SharePoint file-sharing system to Nextcloud, an open-source platform, and is even considering replacing Windows with Linux and telephone and videoconferencing systems with open-source alternatives.
The push for “digital sovereignty” is gaining attention as the Trump administration strikes an increasingly belligerent posture toward the continent, highlighted by recent tensions over Greenland, which intensified fears that Silicon Valley’s tech giants could be compelled to cut off access.
