Swiss authorities want to reduce dependency on Microsoft
swissinfo.ch
swissinfo.ch
Think about integrating calendars, corporate contacts (from AD), handling RSVP replies said mx server receives and updating the calendar server, securely deal with modern auth (+ legacy krb5 auth, yuk). It's a huge hassle and everything except Exchange only handles 80% of this.
Modern expectations now want: web clients (OWA), todo lists, integrated storage (SP/OneDrive), and push notifications to any phone from any vendor.
So yeah, the only on prem solution is still Exchange.
RSVP for example. Nobody read or cares who and what people reply. In the last 4 companies I worked for (including one in Switzerland), nobody cared if I accepted or confirmed my attendance to the meeting and would try to call me/force me into a meeting even when my status showed I was on another shsring my screen. And nobody seems to respond nowadays nor check calendars for availability and avoiding conflicts.
But is that use case really common in practice? With chat tools people don't tend to use email for instant messaging (well, appart from deltachat users, which can be a solution too!) and my experience is that it doesn't even work like that / that well for office 365 users. I am regularly told on teams that an email has been sent to me (same org and same region) yet it still takes more than a couple of minutes to have it visible on my desktop outlook client.
to be honest, most things you list can be setup with some research. The only one I am not sure about is integrated storage, but then I am also not entirely sure what that even is supposed to mean exactly
So, passwords are bad and the password is a key component of krb. Moving away from passwords is a step in the right direction eg OIDC.
i give you the mobile part, I dont know how well it is supported - iOS claims to have support though, and android through third parties I believe. Never tried that. Its just that I personally have a preference for auth methods that dont require opening a browser for desktop apps
Not really surprising. The people Microsoft wined and dined for the contract are not the same people who agree with Thomas Süssli about reducing the dependency. I look forward to seeing them succeed!
There's also fleetdm, which we are not using, but might be something you want to consider
Achieving digital sovereignty is imperative for Europe, in any case.
It's debatable whether there is a need for the latter in Switzerland though. They have maybe the best fiber network in Europe, which far outperforms anything Satellite-based. You'll regularly get 25 Gb/s symmetrical on residential connections: https://sschueller.github.io/posts/the-free-market-lie/
They got the best fiber and the cheapest. They'd laugh at starlink.
I know a lot of people with Starlink in Schweiz. It's a mountainous country with a strong tradition of outdoorsmanship. From a military preparedness perspective, you're not guiding munitions with terrestrial fibre.
It's the most jamming resistant drone control technique.
Ukraine and Russia rely on spools of optical cable strapped to drones.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/1prtlvg/city_in_...
from this perspective if 0.0000001% relies on Elon and USA you are as prepared as I am to fight Mike Tyson :)
maybe you wanted to say Lindt & Sprüngli or Cailler (now part of Nestlé).
EDIT: Not affiliated, I just want it to already be the standard
I root for it, but it will be difficult.
It's a db not a spreadsheet but it's basically the tool I actually needed when I would reach for excel.
I think a lot of “just use Libre Office” arguments are much like “just use Linux.” There’s a deep misunderstanding of what the value is with Excel. Being technically equivalent with features scores very few points.
I'd also argue that Excel is holding back businesses. Instead of storing information in CSVs (for R or Python processing) or SQL, people rely on it when they shouldn't. It's not just that developers dislike Excel, it's that using it frequently causes huge errors:
https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how...
Million and Billion dollar businesses run their whole companies off Excel. They're not really interested in the risk a software change would entail for their companies or individual careers.
> I'd also argue that Excel is holding back businesses.
Agree 100%
I have heard that but never really observed that.
What you usually really have is a number of execs spending their live micromanaging via excel and annoying in cascade all the hierarchical levels below them with excel reports but only a small fraction of them usually have any real business logic and it wouldn't be complicated to switch to something else.
It is simply the good old resistance to change.
In my first job in IT while waiting for my first unix sysadmin role I did some windows support + migrations, I've seen medical secretaries enter in proper rage because we had replaced word 95 for word 97 and the icons were slightly different. Keyboards were launched against monitors. Even accross variying versions of products of the same editor resistance to change applies.
The biggest challenge with replacing Microsoft is licenses come bundled. With office 365 comes online storage/sharing platform, email, chat platform. If you want to move out you need to find alternatives for all of them and all at the same time otherwise you are paying more for the same thing.
https://en.libre-office.fr/article.php/libreoffice-calc-free...
give it a go. Ive never had problems for my use case.
Mentioning libreoffice as competitor to Excel and Access is like you haven't understood the market, at all.
Excel is a cross department business automation database, which can sync/pull/push datasets across filesystems and networks.
VBA is the single most used language in Enterprise because it allows to automate pretty much any financial workflow. And more importantly: automated by non-programmers.
Libreoffice is made for private users, and that's not the same users that VBA powered office documents have.
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/lo/text/sbasic/shared/vb...
are you trying to say its too hard to step into libre from VBS?
https://libreoffice-basic-reference.readthedocs.io/en/latest...
you can stay with MS if you want, but really you dont have to.
also i didnt mention libre as competitor, but as replacement.
its really not that hard, and it might be useful, if MS ends up finding that final straw that breaks it for everyone, you would be better off having a head start and level ground, rather than staring up a wall for employment.
i recommend you orient to it, for future proofing.
scripting:
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/...
API:
https://api.libreoffice.org/docs/idl/ref/annotated.html
BASIC:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/BASIC_Guid...
Working with VBA Macros
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/lo/text/sbasic/shared/vb...
It's a question about compatibility.
As long as xlsx files have to be modified, libre office is a non replacement.
No business would even dare to risk this from an operational perspective. That's my whole point, and the whole argument why Microsoft created their own "dip" with it.
If you as an open source promoter within the company tell C-staff that "you found a solution that might be compatible" they gonna ask you what exactly needs what amount of time. And believe me when I tell you, even getting a sharepoint workflow to run with libreoffice is almost impossible without replacing pretty much everything underneath it.
Making MS office as uninteroperable as possible is the reason companies cannot switch, because they have a legal requirement to archive and access the document for at least 10 years (in some industries up to 20 years when it comes to book keeping and accounting).
So if you propose libreoffice as a solution that
- isn't compatible 1:1
- isn't even guessable how long it takes
- forces unpredictable infrastructure changes
- ends up not rendering your documents that are _legally mandated_
Then guess what the response of your CEO will be.
No amount of downvotes or "opinions" on what is better will change this.
I'm a proponent of open source, but leadership of libreoffice does not seem to understand _why_ companies are using Microsoft office. And that is the core problem that has to be fixed.
There needs to be a predictable and guaranteeable migration path. And as long as there isn't even a converter wizard or anything that helps you with that, libreoffice is a non starter.
I bet they haven't thought about Typescript, VSCode, Github, Linkedin, .NET, npm/node, or the contributions done to Linux kernel, Rust and Python that probably would also require security reviews.
Also most of the key contributors to FOSS alternatives are sponsored by US companies as well.
Which is the problem this ongoing geopolitics crysis. Decision makers only think about the superficial parts and not the whole extent of the dependency problem.
How do they usually turn out? I have heard Germany/France/? switching to LibreOffice or Linux for some government sector, but I suspect they quietly switch back.
It was like you described earlier. Last year and this year it is basically cumulating over multiple countries.
Swiss people are very upset with what is going on with their military spending in US. I do believe they will be serious about all other purchases from US.
Can confirm, as a Swiss person I am flabbergasted at how the federal government keeps pushing for the new fighter jets to be F35s, despite not only the US' currenr erratic behaviour in general, but how it has changed the terms of the purchase deal. Blows my mind, honestly.
But it worked well because it is military, they can manage long term projects without too much external interference and there is zero friction (if the head decides, the rest follows without asking).
In regular public administration, decisions can easily be overturned depending on results of each elections and it is not uncommon to face internal sabotage.
Switzerland could totally be fully computer-independant if they wanted to be.
Anyway I get it - just, odd to think about. Passion accounts for a lot.
Russian anything is completely off the table in europe..
There’s no discussion because it’s hard to discuss the absolute nothing that is happening.
Again - all this action is within 1 and change years of Trump. It's a fairly visible difference in reaction. I just find it weird, that's all.
There is some truth to this, once you look at it. So Russia took Crimea as first abuse, and got some survivable sanctions. Then they hit Ukraine a second time.
Trump, well, it is hit after hit after hit. Liberation day, ICC, threatening greenland, backstabbing Ukraine, Iran. And we're not even halfway his term, and we got proof from the last 2 Republican presidencys that this is no outlayer.