Gandalf_The_Grey
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- Apr 24, 2016
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In Germany, it seems ideology often gets in the way of practicability, at least for a while. The country is now somewhat famous for trying to replace Microsoft solutions with cobbled-together open-source software, which often leads to poor features, high support and training costs and an eventual return to Microsoft’s Office.
Today we have another telling of the familiar tale, this time about the German state of Hessen, who announced this April 2021 that they will be replacing Microsoft Teams in schools with a European solution that would comply better with European privacy standards. The deadline by the Ministry of Culture was the 31st of July 2021.
Initially, the process went well, and a local provider was quickly found. Unfortunately, a losing party in the tender process sued and won, and the tender process was reset. The result of this was that a replacement was not in place by the 31st of July, and Microsoft Teams continued to be used.
In the latest update of the process the tender process was once again stopped, as it turns out the specifications were not clear enough regarding the required functionality of the solution.