Microsoft 365 alternative: openDesk version 1.0 announced for October

The open-source Microsoft 365 alternative openDesk, which is funded by the German government, plans to launch its version 1.0 in mid-October. openDesk promises open-source applications for digital collaboration under a standardized interface. This includes word processing, spreadsheets, chat and video conferencing tools, cloud storage, a project management module, a wiki and email, contact and calendar functions.

With this project, the federal government aims to reduce the German authorities' dependence on US providers such as Microsoft. Version 1.0 will be officially presented at the Smart Country Convention, which will take place in Berlin from October 15 to 17.

Enterprise version with self-hosting and SaaS

The individual components of the office and collaboration suite are open source components from Collabora, Element, Nextcloud, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention, Open Project and XWiki. In addition to the community edition of openDesk , version 1.0 also includes an enterprise edition with two professional operating models: as a package for operation in your own data center (self-hosting) and as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). openDesk is intended to run entirely as a web application; local installations are not required.

IT service provider B1 Systems will provide support for the self-hosting version, while the SaaS version will be provided by German cloud provider StackIT. Both companies were awarded the contract last month by ZenDis ("Center for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration") , the company behind Opendesk.

Sovereign workplace instead of Microsoft

openDesk is the result of an initiative by the German government and nine federal states. They joined forces in November 2021 to reduce the public sector's dependence on US software under the project name "Sovereign Workplace" at the time. ZenDiS, founded in 2022, coordinates the development of openDesk as a public limited company on behalf of the federal government.

The federal government intends to provide ZenDiS with around 10 million euros for the further development of the suite in the current year. In previous years, the federal government has already invested around 35 million euros in the development of openDesk. The Microsoft 365 alternative also competes with the technically closely related Phoenix suite from the public northern German IT service provider Dataport, although this is not completely open source and is currently only available as Software-as-a-Service.

(axk)