At a time of growing concern over the power of the world’s mighty tech companies, one German state is turning its back on US giant Microsoft.
In less than three months’ time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft’s ubiquitous programs at work.
Legal liability for when the service, inevitably, gets breached. If the government hosts it, they’re liable. If the vendor hosts it, the vendor is liable. Simple as money matters.
So they could just use a service offered by (checks notes) T-Systems, Siemens, Lufthansa Systems, SAP, TeamViewer AG,… what’s that? In all these years these companies were relying on US service providers as well, instead of innovating? Well that sucks.
Spread responsibility thinly across as many organizations and departments within those organizations and across as many legal thresholds as you can to minimize blowback when something inevitably has to be held to account.