openDesk: B1 and StackIT offer enterprise version of the Microsoft alternative
The Government wants to reduce its dependence on Microsoft with openDesk. B1 Systems and StackIT have now been awarded the contract for a professional version.
(Image: KI Midjourney | Collage c’t)
- Oliver Bünte
The Microsoft 365 alternative openDesk, which is funded by the German government, will also be available with support and as software-as-a-service in the future. The IT service provider B1 Systems will coordinate the further development of the open-source office suite and take over service and maintenance. The cloud provider StackIT hosts openDesk in its data centers as Software-as-a-Service. This was announced by the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS) on Tuesday.
As a public limited company, ZenDiS coordinates the development of openDesk on behalf of the German government. At the end of May, ZenDiS formally invited tenders for "development services as well as service and maintenance services for openDesk". B1 and StackIT have now been awarded the contract for an initial period of two years.
With openDesk, the federal government wants to reduce the authorities' dependence on Microsoft. The suite consists of open-source web applications such as Nextcloud, Collabora, Element and OX. According to ZenDiS, B1 Systems, as "general contractor", will now improve the integration of the individual components and coordinate further development.
The planned "Enterprise Edition" of openDesk will be available as a SaaS offering from StackIT, but also as a self-hosted solution for operation in the company's own data center. So far, openDesk is only available as a "Community Edition" without support.
Federal government has budgeted 10 million euros
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. At that time, the suite was still called "Sovereign Workplace".
openDesk is intended as a Microsoft 365 alternative for federal, state and local authorities. As such, the package competes with the technically closely related Phoenix suite from the public, northern German IT service provider Dataport, which is not completely open source and is currently only available as Software-as-a-Service. (cwo)