Given the huge concentration of US-owned date centres in Ireland this must be a Munich++ situation.
Ireland stalls €1B Microsoft tender amid digital sovereignty questions
The Irish government has kicked a Microsoft procurement potentially worth €1 billion into touch amid a political debate about the nation's overreliance on US tech providers and a move to free and open source software. In Ireland's parliament (Dáil Éireann), Frankie Feighan, Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, …
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Sunday 26th July 2026 13:50 GMT Sproggit
The Value of Ireland
There are two main reasons that Ireland is so popular with US multinational companies.
The first is that Ireland speaks English - albeit with a lovely accent - and that means that they can converse with their Corporate Overlords in the US without having to parse everything through a second language... It means that US-based lawyers can read contracts and legal briefs without having to pay and wait for translation. There is a significant advantage to US companies through having a foothold in the Irish Republic.
In case you read that and wonder why those companies would not simply use the UK... it's because the EU tried to get a bit "cute" with big US companies in response to Brexit - for example they required that financial institutions wanting to transact Euro business must have an EU *headquarters"... There was definitely a hope for cities like Paris and Frankfurt that they could attract a significant amount of investment and high-paying jobs this way - and those nations were gutted when American companies chose to go to the Irish Republic.
The second reason is that Ireland have been in real trouble with their finances and were desperate for any way to bring employment to the country - so they set up tax schemes that were extremely favorable to US multi-nationals. A lot of that has since been leveled out - the other EU nations took umbrage - but by then the US companies had already put their roots down in Ireland and weren't about to incur more expense moving just to satisfy bureaucrats.
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 10:18 GMT Pirate Peter
problems, problem
moving to linux , libra office etc is not the problem
it is the lack of support staff knowledgable of linux, also smaller range on tools to control and audit networks, mdm etc
and even if you have a single MS server for a critical function everyone will need a CAL to access it, so Microsoft will still win
you have to do an all or nothing approach
and don't forget to ditch the "chrome " browser as well, although I have come across a number of sites / apps which will only work with it
it would be a big project that will take 3-5 years minimum to complete and remove Microsoft / google entirely from and environment
pilot a small department first to find al the software and skills you need while still paying the M$ / Google taxes then once ready a gradual roll out
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 15:46 GMT I could be a dog really
Re: problems, problem
Indeed, the best way to make sure a project doesn't succeed is to put off starting it because it will take a long time/take a lot of effort/need new skills/whatever. And the longer you leave it, the harder it becomes to escape - that's by design, MS have spent a couple of decades steadily making it a bigger and bigger challenge to escape.
I suppose one way to get things started would be to require all documents to be in a truly open format - specifying that "open" means fully documented, available to all on a FRAND basis, and with a test/validation suite available (that should stop OOXML in it's tracks !)
And with the sort of numbers being bandied about, if all of us (i.e. all the countries in Europe and round about) chipped in a fraction of that in supporting/sponsoring alternatives, that would quickly raise the level of what's available. At present, by design, the M365 ecosystem covers a lot of (apparently) integrated functions - some of them without open alternatives, most without any form of integration resembling what M365 users take for granted.
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