France's digital sovereignty push faces challenges moving users off Microsoft Office despite Nextcloud adoption
By
Richard Speed
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Summary
France's Ministry of Education has been working since 2018 to adopt Nextcloud, an open source storage and collaboration suite, as part of a digital sovereignty push. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated urgency in 2020, and a 2021 fire at OVH destroyed all their data. Despite progress on locally controlled storage, the article highlights the ongoing struggle to move users away from Microsoft Office and other proprietary tools, illustrating the difficulty of achieving true digital sovereignty.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledWe had this little incident with OVH, a little fire, which destroyed all our data
Digital sovereignty loomed large at Nextcloud's annual summit in Munich last week
France's Ministry of Education started initial work to adopt it in 2018
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