Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court suddenly couldn't access his email. According to Microsoft, that's because of US sanctions against the court's employees. The Trump administration was not amused by the Court's arrest warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The main takeaway from this episode is that those looking to protect themselves from Trump's wrath would be wise not to depend on any companies from his country. According to the Dutch newspaper NRC, the International Criminal Court now uses a German alternative to Microsoft, though it has not officially commented on the switch.

The German alternative, OpenDesk, allows users to send emails, edit text-based documents, create presentations, share files, and make video calls. It is open source, so anyone can view and improve its code.

The same applies to another alternative, also from Germany, called Nextcloud. This office software has been tested by around 75 researchers from five Dutch universities since the beginning of 2025. Maybe other institutions could switch to it as well?

Dependency
Dutch higher education is highly dependent on American tech companies, especially Microsoft. Not only do students and staff use its software extensively, but their IT staff are tied to a wide range of specialised Microsoft software. In addition, Dutch universities store a lot of data in Microsoft's cloud.

Dutch lecturers have been sounding the alarm about this. Last Wednesday, the knowledge centre for practice-oriented research, DCC-PO, stated that the dominance of parties such as Google and Microsoft threatens the autonomy of Dutch researchers. In their view, universities should adopt more open-source tools and open standards.

In July, the Young Academy also warned that students and staff at Dutch higher education institutions have no idea what tech companies are doing with their data. By outsourcing the management of IT systems, these educational institutions are losing technical knowledge and control. As a result, they are becoming increasingly dependent on big tech, putting academic freedom and independence at risk.

Fickle
Seven Dutch universities and one university college are already on the State of Florida's sanctions list for severing or freezing ties with Israeli institutions. With a fickle president like Donald Trump, educational institutions could also face “punishment” at any moment.

Can they do without Microsoft, however? Can they work without Office, Outlook, Teams and OneDrive? Not yet, according to UU professors José van Dijck and Albert Meijer. "All research and education would come to an immediate standstill," they wrote in March in an open letter calling on the Executive Board to do something about digital dependence.

According to the professors, Utrecht University is particularly dependent on Microsoft Office 365. UU staff and students use the programme for email and video calls, writing and sharing documents, creating presentations and data storage, among other tasks. Such dependence makes for "vulnerabilities, especially in light of a rapidly changing geopolitical situation".

Meijer and Van Dijck believe that "dependence on big tech is fundamentally at odds with public values such as freedom, independence, autonomy and equality". The professors would like the Executive Board to invest more in "local expertise," for example, by using its own mail server. They also recommend collaborating with other European universities, especially those in Germany and France, "on an autonomous academic IT infrastructure".

Breaking free
It is becoming increasingly clear that dependence on big tech entails risks. This also applies to Dutch higher education, according to Wladimir Mufty, from SURF, the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions. "We have already gone through an awareness phase that lasted several years. We have looked at where the dependencies lie, and now it is time to start trying out alternatives."

Mufty is SURF's digital sovereignty programme manager. At the end of last year, he sat down with five universities that wanted a single, shared digital environment for their research programme, AlgoSoc. Scientists from Delft, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Tilburg and Amsterdam (UvA) wanted to use the same appointment planner, share files, work together on a single text, and make video calls, without being dependent on a large provider. Mufty suggested the open source software package from Nextcloud.

One of the users, PhD student Jacqueline Kernahan from TU Delft, thinks that Nextcloud could compete with Microsoft, though there are still a few glitches here and there. She is not deterred by those, as she knows how problematic dependence on Microsoft is.

She demonstrates the software in the hall of her faculty in Delft. It looks very ordinary. "The word processor is quite good," says Kernahan, who is doing her PhD on quality and security controls in digital systems. "I'm an average user, so I don't need all the options and apps the programme has to offer. But, to be honest, Microsoft is making it increasingly attractive to switch. Now that the company is putting AI in everything, everything is becoming more annoying to use."

Nevertheless, Mufty believes that not all educational institutions will be able to switch to OpenDesk or Nextcloud overnight. "The Criminal Court now has to act quickly, under pressure, but if a university wanted to move away from Microsoft tomorrow, that would pose a problem."

Entanglement
Meanwhile, Microsoft is taking on more and more tasks. In addition to office software, it also develops artificial intelligence, builds its own data centres and even lays its own internet cables on the seabed. The company is “vertically integrated”, as specialists call it: everything can be done through one company, from basic technology to the end user.

And that's not all. Microsoft is also expanding “horizontally” by acquiring companies where content is the primary focus, rather than technology. "That's a new phase, which I find worrying," says Mufty. For example, Microsoft bought LinkedIn, with its hundreds of millions of active users who produce enormous amounts of data, and GitHub, where software developers can share and store their work.

SURF is keeping a close eye on these developments. "I would like our education to remain public and be able to pursue public values such as autonomy, independence and academic freedom. IT should be helpful, not controlling," says Mufty.

He views the collaboration between Microsoft and Sanoma with suspicion. The Finnish publisher, which also serves the Dutch education market through its Malmberg subsidiary, wants to make its teaching materials available via Microsoft Teams. Microsoft would then add its own “learning accelerators”, i.e. artificial intelligence designed to help personalise the learning process. “Things like this sometimes keep me awake at night,” sighs Mufty.

Alternatives
Dutch and European alternatives do exist. For example, research institute TNO is working with SURF and the Netherlands Forensic Institute on its own AI language model. There are also dedicated data centres.

Additionally, SURFConext is making headway with a secure login service. "But that's not enough. If logging in via Microsoft doesn't work in the future for whatever reason, we'll have a big problem. This also applies to applications that are not from Microsoft itself," explains Mufty.

In his view, we need serious alternatives. When the need arises, one shouldn't have to start from scratch. Moreover, competition ensures that the market leader cannot charge top dollar.

But which educational institution is willing to sacrifice itself to run those alternatives, with all the teething problems that entails, when Microsoft can deliver everything ready-made? Mufty believes that, especially in the beginning, educational institutions will have to run two systems in parallel, with additional expenditure on support, maintenance, and security. "But in my opinion, no sector is as value-driven as education and research. This is precisely where alternatives should be able to get off the ground."

Rectors
In 2019, the rectors of fourteen universities jointly published a compelling argument about the digital independence of Dutch higher education. The gist was that we risk losing control to Google and Microsoft.

Little has improved since then, according to Jacquelien Scherpen, Rector of the University of Groningen. "The coronavirus pandemic broke out just a few months after that article was published. We became even more dependent on big tech, because we didn't have time to look for alternatives." Microsoft Teams has become indispensable, for example.

Scherpen is the portfolio holder for digital sovereignty within UNL, the umbrella association for Dutch universities. She advocates taking small steps: "If we now choose an alternative product that functions less well, students and staff will start using free programmes, and we will be further away from our goal."

Moreover, Scherpen says that we need legislation to protect European alternatives from big tech. Suppose a university partners up with a European competitor of Microsoft, and then Microsoft buys that company, what is the university to do then?

That is not a theoretical scenario. She mentions the Dutch software company Solvinity, which is involved with government services such as DigiD and provides secure communication for the Ministry of Justice. An American company now wants to take it over.

Scherpen: "Perhaps we need to become more protectionist, without hindering the free exchange of new insights and innovations. We must ensure that the independence we are fighting for does not slip out of our hands again."