It was great actually: suddenly we were leaving behind a bunch of bloated MS cruft and working with nice stuff. As someone working at CERN I was really inspired, not just by the support for open source but by how well it all worked.

Then next thing I knew we were doubling down on MS stuff. I don't know what happened. It was sad though, and the user experience did not improve in the end.

I'm not close enough to CERN-IT to know the details. But for what it's worth, no one I knew in IT could think of a good reason for going back.

Edit: “Partnership is the art of understanding shared value. In WFP we have a number of partnerships, not many, but the ones that we have are deep, are sustained, are long-term. And definitely UNICC is one of them. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer and Director Technology Division at the WFP” [1]

United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) is a Microsoft shop. Legit to assume, if OP statement holds true, she got the business sponsorship going while CIO at the World Food Program (WFP).

This kind of attempted executive takeover is always the strategy of a team. Who sponsored and voted for her at CERN is the real person of interest.

1. https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/

2. https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-...