“Mission accomplished!” : Germany slams the door on Microsoft for 2.9 million inhabitants
Germany’s northernmost state is fully switching to free software. A pioneering project scrutinized by all of Europe. © Shuttershock
It’s now official: Schleswig-Holstein will no longer use Exchange Server or Outlook. The state authorities announced on Wednesday that they had completed the migration of all of their messaging to Open-Xchange and Mozilla Thunderbird.
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A six-month process which involved more than forty thousand mailboxes and mobilized some thirty thousand agents, from the State Chancellery to ministries, including justice, regional police and all territorial administrations.
Schleswig-Holstein completes its break with Microsoft
Schleswig-Holstein migrated forty thousand accounts and one hundred million emails to free solutions in six months. © Shuttershock
This shift is part of a broader plan to divest from Microsoft solutions, initiated several years ago and formalized in the state’s “Open Innovation and Open Source” strategy. As of 2021, the regional government undertook to replace the Office suite with LibreOffice. Today, with the disappearance of Outlook from its infrastructures, Microsoft Office is gradually being uninstalled from administration computers.
In October 2025, the transition from the messaging system from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to the open source solutions Open-Xchange and Thunderbird was fully completed. Schleswig-Holstein has come much closer to the goal of a digitally sovereign IT workplace.
What remains to be migrated is SharePoint, which Nextcloud must replace, and the Windows operating systems, currently being tested in version Linux. The state is also testing OpenTalk for videoconferencing and plans to switch its telephone systems to free solutions.
“We are true pioneers. We cannot rely on the experience of others – there is hardly a comparable project of this scale in the world”welcomed Dirk Schrödter, Minister of Digitalization and Head of the State Chancellery, before adding: “Mission accomplished”.
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An obsession: digital sovereignty
Unlike migration projects motivated by budgetary considerations, these ruptures follow a political logic. The central issue is called “digital sovereignty”, this pressing desire to keep European data under European jurisdiction.
The previous one from Munich, who switched to Linux in 2013 before turning back four years later, had fueled skepticism. But successive failures today seem less dissuasive than the prospect of lasting technological dependence on American players.
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