Euro-Office billed as Europe’s sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office
12A group of European technology firms has launched a new open-source office suite aimed at offering a sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office.
Euro-Office consists of four core applications — a document editor, spreadsheet program, presentation tool, and PDF editor — and is built on the open-source OnlyOffice suite. It supports Microsoft Office file formats DOCX, PPTX and XLSX, as well as Open Document Format (ODF) files such as ODS, ODT and ODP.
Those involved include open-source productivity software vendor Nextcloud, cloud hosting provider Ionos, and Proton, a Swiss software-as-a-service provider that sells privacy-focused email and other productivity tools.
The Euro-Office initiative is driven by demand for a “complete sovereign, open-source, decentralized solution” among European organizations, Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud, told Computerworld, amid a growing push for alternatives to US technology providers in the region.
“Europe needs to reduce its reliance on big tech — open source is an essential tool,” said Harald Wehnes, professor at the University of Würzburg Institute of Computer Science and speaker for the German Informatics Society’s Working Group on Digital Sovereignty.
Euro-Office is targeted at Europe’s “extremely dependent businesses and governments,” which largely rely on US technology providers, he said. “Customers are unhappy with current offerings and want a true European alternative.”
Karlitschek plans to introduce a new product based on Euro-Office into its Nextcloud Hub, he told Computerworld, though pricing and availability are yet to be confirmed.
Nextcloud currently provides productivity apps from OnlyOffice and Collabora as part of its Nextcloud Hub suite. Both have drawbacks, according to Karlitschek: Collabora’s software is built on LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice, and has usability limitations, he said. (Nextcloud will continue to offer Collabora as an option to customers, however, and some of Collabora’s code will be incorporated into Euro-Office software.) With regards to OnlyOffice, Karlitschek cited customer concerns about the owner company’s supposed roots in Russia.
Nextcloud, Proton, and Ionos have each allocated “two-digit” numbers of developers to development of Euro-Office, said Karlitschek, with others contributing on a slightly smaller scale.
It’s early days for the project — a preview version of the software is available now on GitHub, with a 1.0 release set for the summer — but Karlitschek said that initial priorities include development of mobile and desktop apps, as well as addressing document incompatibilities.
There are several reasons why organizations might wish to use an open-source productivity suite such as Euro-Office.
European organizations, particularly in public sector and regulated industries, are “evaluating an exit strategy from the US-owned productivity suites like Microsoft Office,” said Dario Maisto, senior analyst at Forrester.
“Organizations are mainly moved by a desire to improve their digital sovereignty posture, escape vendor lock-in, and have a ready alternative to avoid costly price increases from one enterprise agreement renewal to the other,” Maisto said.
The European Union recently launched an initiative intended to support the growth and sustainability of its open-source sector, while some member state governments have signalled intentions for wider open-source adoption.
Aerospace and defense sector organizations often need to inspect and certify code, Maisto said, particularly as geopolitical volatility increases. Whether this means a “deliberate choice for Euro-Office is a whole different discussion,” he said.
Gaining traction among end-user organizations will likely be challenging. An open-source implementation can be a significant undertaking for IT teams, said Maisto, particularly at the scale required to achieve cost savings versus proprietary tools. A lack of advanced functionality such as Excel macros can be problematic for a subset of office workers.
He also cited the axiom “nobody was ever fired for choosing Microsoft.”
“While this attitude is changing, it will take time to instill a culture of — and trust in — open-source alternatives,” said Maisto.
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Original Link:https://www.computerworld.com/article/4152487/euro-office-billed-as-europes-sovereign-alternative-to-microsoft-office.html
Originally Posted: Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:29:06 +0000
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