Awful piece and so incredibly discouraging to hear that this kind of person has influence at such an organization. They must have some personal incentive in one way or another to keep close to the status quo.

Anyone large organization has ever moved away from dependency on US BigTech has done so piece by piece. China is the prime example. They've been decreasing their dependencies every year back from when it was at its highest. Percentage by percentage. This is the way.

> “Besides word processors, Microsoft also has security solutions, cables, servers in data centers, access control, SharePoint, and AI across all of this,” De Jong explains. “So simply replacing Microsoft isn't an option.”

> And switching only partially would require a lot of extra administrative work and money, and wouldn't reduce the risk of data blocking. The American giant is the largest supplier of software and services to TU/e.

I'd be surprised if this article wasn't indirectly written by Microsoft.