The Hidden Risk of American Tech Dependence

The Hidden Risk of American Tech Dependence

For many organisations outside the United States, the default technology stack has become a bundle of American services: Microsoft 365 for productivity, Google Workspace and Gmail for email, and cloud services that can be activated with a credit card. The convenience is undeniable, but the risks are now impossible to ignore. When the rules are set elsewhere and enforced by automated systems, you are always one policy change or account suspension away from disruption.

The German Case, with Names and Numbers

The clearest current example is the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The migration was announced by the Digitalisation Minister, Dirk Schrödter, and it is not a small pilot. The plan is to move approximately 30,000 users from Microsoft services to Free and Open Source Software. The programme is phased from 2024 to 2027 to minimise operational risks and to allow time for training, data migration, and workflow adjustments. In public statements, the state has described the savings as tens of millions of euros over the project's lifecycle, alongside the long-term benefits of digital sovereignty and reduced vendor lock-in.

The political trigger has been openly discussed in Germany. A state politician had his Microsoft account suspended, reportedly for political reasons. That incident served as a wake-up call. It demonstrated that access to essential communications can be revoked by a foreign vendor without due process or local accountability. The response was not merely to switch office tools, but to reconsider the entire dependency model and shift to software that can be audited, hosted locally, and governed under German law.

A Real Customer Story

We have a customer who lost access to a Gmail account that underpinned sales enquiries and support conversations. Despite weeks of effort, the account could not be recovered. The loss was not theoretical. It resulted in tens of thousands of pounds in missed sales leads and damaged relationships with existing customers. There was no clear escalation path, no accountable individual, and no contractual remedy. That is the reality when your core business processes depend on a consumer-grade account controlled entirely by a third party.

This is Bigger than Tools

There is a socio-economic angle that is rarely discussed. The United States is not a neutral party. It pursues its own policy objectives and has both the legal mechanisms and the political will to pressure domestic companies to act in support of those objectives. This can involve account suspensions, data access, or the subtle re-ranking and suppression of content. Even if you are not a political target, your organisation can still be caught up in broad enforcement actions, sanctions, or compliance programmes that you do not control.

Censorship and surveillance are the obvious risks, but the deeper issue is dependency. When a single vendor owns your identity, email, files, and collaboration, your business is only as stable as their policies and the geopolitical climate. If your organisation, sector, or country falls foul of US policy, what is the potential damage from losing access overnight? That is not a hypothetical question. It is already happening, as seen in various international sanctions and platform decisions.

Capability is Not the Issue

A common objection is that Free and Open Source Software cannot match Microsoft or Google. In practice, the feature gap has narrowed to the point of irrelevance for most organisations. LibreOffice covers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations at a professional level. LibreOffice Base provides a comprehensive database tool for line-of-business applications, not just a spreadsheet masquerading as one. Collabora Online offers browser-based document editing, and Nextcloud delivers file sharing, calendars, contacts, and collaboration. When coupled with proper integration and support, the user experience is solid, secure, and reliable.

LibreOffice also sits within a mature ecosystem. OpenDocument is a published, royalty-free standard. That means documents remain readable and portable across thousands of FOSS applications. It also means integration is straightforward. Base can connect to established database engines, Calc can feed reporting tools, and Writer can generate structured output for other systems. You are not trapped inside a single vendor's format or licensing model, allowing for greater flexibility and future-proofing.

The Cost of Subscriptions Adds Up

Subscription pricing looks manageable on a monthly invoice, but it compounds quickly. For a 250-person company using Microsoft 365 Business Premium at £19.70 per user per month, the five-year cost is substantial. Compare that with a LibreOffice, Collabora, and Nextcloud stack with hosting and support at £7.50 per user per month.

That is a five-year difference of £195,500. The number will vary by deployment and support model, but the direction is consistent. Organisations are paying subscription premiums for tools they could control themselves, often with equal or better outcomes in terms of customisation and data ownership.

What Sovereignty Looks Like in Practice

Digital sovereignty is not a slogan. It is the ability to run your own identity, email, files, and collaboration on infrastructure governed by your own law, not someone else's. With FOSS, you can host systems locally or with a trusted provider in your jurisdiction. You can audit the code, decide how data is stored, and avoid lock-in. When a policy change or automated enforcement threatens access, you continue as others fail, because the software and the data are yours.

This control extends to support and issue resolution, where the differences become stark. Providers like Microsoft and Google are effectively non-contactable for most users.

Imagine arriving at work tomorrow to find your email inaccessible, conferencing tools offline, messaging disrupted, and phones down. What do you do? You contact your managed service provider, who in turn raises a case with Microsoft. They cannot simply ring a direct line; instead, they battle through the same barrage of unhelpful AI-driven suggestions. Eventually, a response comes from a support agent in India, following a script but lacking any real experience, and the cycle continues. Only large enterprise customers, paying substantial support fees, enjoy a direct line to Microsoft, and that is probably not you.

In contrast, with a locally hosted FOSS environment, resolution is far more straightforward. You pick up the phone or raise a ticket which is handled by a real person, usually an expert who can diagnose and fix the issue there and then. This immediate, human-led support minimises downtime and restores operations quickly, without the layers of bureaucracy and delay inherent in dealing with distant, impersonal tech giants.

Vendor lock-in is the commercial side of the same risk. When your files, identities, and workflows are tied to a single vendor's proprietary stack, switching becomes expensive and politically difficult. You then keep paying because the exit cost is too high. Sovereignty breaks that cycle. It gives you the leverage to negotiate, to change providers, or to bring services back in-house without rewriting your business around a single vendor's roadmap.

Security Exposure and Blast Radius

There is another risk that rarely gets a fair comparison. In many Microsoft 365 deployments, one password unlocks everything: email, files, Teams, SharePoint, and in many cases admin consoles. That concentrates risk. A single compromised credential can cascade into a full business compromise. With a well-designed FOSS stack, you can limit exposure. One password can mean one mailbox, not one organisation. Access to files and collaboration can be segmented, and services can be isolated. That reduces the blast radius of any breach and makes remediation much faster and less expensive.

Summary

A real-world analysis comes down to three points: risk, capability, and cost. On risk, dependency on American platforms exposes organisations to policy shifts, account suspensions, concentrated security failures, and surveillance risks through backdoors and intergovernmental data sharing. On capability, modern FOSS stacks deliver the same outcomes with open standards and wider integration. On cost, the subscription model is simply more expensive over time. In none of these areas does the American tech win.

Migration is not an overnight task, but it is far from chaotic. With phased planning, user training, and a trusted provider to manage the transition, the move can be smooth and largely seamless for end users. The result is a stack you control, at lower cost, with a smaller blast radius when things go wrong.

One final point of transparency. We make more money selling Microsoft 365 subscriptions and providing support than we ever would from supporting your own stack. This is not about our profitability. It is about reducing the risk to our customers in a world that is starting to wake up to this reality. Whatever you decide, GEN is here to help you through it.