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More organisations are asking whether they could run their documents on an open office suite: LibreOffice on the desktop, or Collabora Online, OnlyOffice or the new Euro-Office in the browser. The reasons vary, from where documents are held and under which law, to licence costs and the wish to keep files in open formats.
We have used LibreOffice ourselves for the last decade, having moved to it from OpenOffice, so our advice comes from running it every day. We help you decide whether a move makes sense, which suite fits, and how to make it work: assessment and pilot, hosting in the UK or on your own servers, migration, training and support. We are a Microsoft partner and support Microsoft 365 too, so our advice is about what suits your organisation, not about moving you away from anything.
The question we are asked most is not whether an open suite can do the job, but whether it is the right choice: whether anybody of any size has actually done it. They have. The reasons come first, and then who is moving, at what scale, and the figures the projects publish.
An organisation's documents are its contracts, its finances and its personal data. Running the editor on servers you choose, in the UK or on your own premises, means you know where every document is held and who administers the system it sits on.
Where a provider is based decides which laws can reach the data it holds, wherever its servers are. For many organisations that is an acceptable position; for some, particularly in the public sector and regulated work, it is a question their board wants answered.
LibreOffice carries no licence fee. The browser suites have community editions and paid editions with vendor support for larger deployments. What remains is hosting, migration and support, and those are costs you can see and control.
When documents, mail, storage and identity all come from one supplier, changing any one of them means changing all of them. Open suites that sit in front of your own file platform let each part be chosen, and replaced, on its merits.
The Open Document Format (ODF) is an OASIS and ISO/IEC 26300 standard, fully documented and readable by many applications, so a document saved today does not depend on any one product being available to open it in twenty years.
From a single ministry to more than 100,000 police workstations, open office suites are running in production across Europe, and the pace picked up sharply in 2025 and 2026. The detail is below.
Sovereignty is the reason most of them give. The International Criminal Court's move followed its chief prosecutor losing access to his Microsoft account after US sanctions in 2025, an event cited again and again in the decisions that followed.
| Organisation | Country | The move | Scale and status |
| French central government (DINUM) | France | In April 2026 every ministry was ordered to plan the removal of non-European software dependencies, office software included, and DINUM began moving its own workstations to Linux | Plans due in autumn 2026; reported to cover around 2.5 million civil servants' workstations |
| Gendarmerie nationale | France | OpenOffice.org and ODF as the national standard from 2005, now LibreOffice, on its own Linux desktop, GendBuntu | More than 100,000 workstations, 97% of the estate by 2024 |
| City of Lyon | France | Replacing Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and OnlyOffice | Under way since 2025 |
| Schleswig-Holstein state government | Germany | LibreOffice made the binding office standard across ministries and authorities from 4 December 2025 | About 80% of workplaces outside the tax administration switched, 30,000 staff; completion planned for the end of 2026, with licence savings reported at over €15 million in 2026 |
| German federal government (openDesk) | Germany | A sovereign workplace suite from ZenDiS, with Collabora Online as its document editor | Version 1.0 in October 2024, in production at federal agencies |
| Swiss Federal Chancellery (BOSS) | Switzerland | An openDesk workplace introduced alongside Microsoft 365, approved on 2 September 2026 | 3,000 workstations by the end of 2027, CHF 9 million first phase |
| Dutch central government (DAWO) | Netherlands | A government-built sovereign workplace, from the operating system to the office software, made official policy by a July 2026 directive | Eight municipalities testing; a stable release is targeted for 2027 |
| Ministry of Digital Affairs | Denmark | Moving from Microsoft Office 365 to LibreOffice; Copenhagen and Aarhus have announced plans to phase out Microsoft systems | Migration began in the summer of 2025 |
| Austrian Armed Forces | Austria | Microsoft Office replaced by LibreOffice, chosen so that its systems work without the cloud or any single vendor | 16,000 workstations; Microsoft Office removed in 2025 |
| International Criminal Court | The Hague | Replacing Microsoft's workplace software with openDesk | About 1,800 workstations, announced in October 2025 |
| UK government | United Kingdom | Adopted ODF as the standard for sharing and collaborating on government documents | Since 2014 |
Bought StarDivision in 1999 for US$59.5 million, reportedly because it cost less than licensing Microsoft Office for its 42,000 staff. StarOffice became OpenOffice.org, the direct ancestor of LibreOffice.
Began moving to OpenOffice.org in 2005, and by February 2007 it was installed on more than 71,000 workstations across its branches and offices, alongside Linux on its servers and many of its desktops.
Built Lotus Symphony, its free office suite, on OpenOffice technology with ODF as its format, then contributed it to Apache OpenOffice in 2012.
Collabora Online serves 70,000 users at the University of Lille, and 100,000 across Dutch research and education through SURF.
LibreOffice downloads from the official site in 2025, the highest in the project's history, from an estimated 100 to 180 million users. Source: The Document Foundation annual report.
People using ONLYOFFICE every day, according to ONLYOFFICE in July 2026.
Downloads of Collabora Online over its first ten years, delivered through more than 200 partners. Source: Collabora, July 2026.
This is a moving picture, and the list above was checked on 29 September 2026. Figures are those published by the organisations and projects themselves, or widely reported at the time; user numbers are the projects' own estimates.
The desktop suite from The Document Foundation, released under the MPL 2.0 and running on Windows, macOS and Linux. Writer, Calc, Impress and Base cover word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and databases, with ODF as the native format and Microsoft formats opened and saved by conversion. It works fully offline.
A browser-based suite built on LibreOffice technology, with several people able to edit the same document at once. It is the document editor inside openDesk, the German sovereign workplace suite that reached version 1.0 in October 2024 and is run by German federal agencies. Current releases are the 26.04 series.
Browser and desktop editors built around Microsoft's OOXML formats, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, developed by Ascensio System SIA. The community edition is released under the AGPLv3, with commercial editions alongside it. Working natively in Microsoft's formats suits documents that move back and forth to Microsoft Office users.
A fork of OnlyOffice by a coalition of European organisations including Nextcloud and IONOS, released under the AGPLv3, with its first stable release on 9 June 2026. It runs in the browser, with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and PDF editor, and reads and writes DOCX, XLSX and PPTX as well as ODT, ODS and ODP.
OnlyOffice has publicly disputed the fork's licensing and suspended its partnership with Nextcloud, and Nextcloud and the Free Software Foundation dispute that reading. It is a consideration when choosing, and we will set out what it means for your deployment.
| Suite | Desktop or browser | Native format | Licence | Co-editing | Best fit |
| LibreOffice | Desktop: Windows, macOS, Linux | ODF | MPL 2.0 | Not live; files shared through your file platform | Desktop and offline work, organisations standardising on ODF |
| Collabora Online | Browser | ODF | MPL 2.0, with supported editions | Yes, in the browser | Shared editing on a LibreOffice engine, alongside LibreOffice desktops |
| OnlyOffice | Browser and desktop | OOXML (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) | AGPLv3 community edition, commercial editions | Yes, in the browser | Organisations exchanging mostly Microsoft format files |
| Euro-Office | Browser | OOXML and ODF, read and write | AGPLv3 | Yes, in the browser | A European-governed browser suite, accepting a young project |
Microsoft 365 remains a sound choice for many organisations, and Microsoft Office opens and saves ODF files too. We are a Microsoft partner, we support Microsoft 365, and a mixed estate, with open suites for most staff and Microsoft Office where the work depends on it, is often the right answer.
We look at a sample of your real documents, templates and spreadsheets, and at how your teams work, then run a pilot with a group of your own staff. You decide on evidence from your own files, not a feature list.
We host the document server on GEN Cloud in our own UK data centres, or install it on your own servers if you would rather keep it on your premises. Either way we build, patch and monitor it.
The browser editors sit in front of a file platform, such as Nextcloud, which holds the documents, their sharing and their versions. We integrate the two with your directory, so staff open and edit documents where they already keep them.
Moving the files, converting formats where that is the right choice, and rebuilding templates so letterheads, styles and numbering behave as they did. Teams can move in stages, with the pilot group first.
Practical sessions for staff, remotely or on site, one to one or in groups, with more depth for the people who build templates and complex spreadsheets. See Training.
The same UK engineers who built the system support it afterwards, users and servers alike, through the Help Desk, with no support contract required.
None of these is a reason not to move, but each one is a reason to look before you do. The assessment finds them, and for each we recommend whether to rebuild it, replace it or keep that piece of work on Microsoft Office.
The open suites cost nothing to license. LibreOffice installs on the desktop, and ONLYOFFICE and Collabora Online run in the browser from a server you host yourself, anywhere that runs Docker, at next to no cost. Microsoft and Google charge for every user, every month.
| LibreOffice | ONLYOFFICE | Collabora Online | Microsoft 365 Business Standard | Google Workspace Business Standard | |
| Per user per month | Free | Free | Free | £10.80 | £11.80 |
| Per user per year | Free | Free | Free | £129.60 | £141.60 |
Microsoft and Google prices are for their standard business products, Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Google Workspace Business Standard, in pounds excluding VAT, as published on 29 September 2026. Their premium and plus plans cost more. Microsoft's price is for an annual subscription paid yearly; Google's is its monthly list price.
Open source software is free to download and free to use, in a business as much as at home, with no licence fee and no count of seats. That freedom is real, and it is why so much of the world's infrastructure runs on it.
It is not free to make. Every release is the work of developers, testers and translators, and of the foundations and companies that pay them. A project that only ever gives and never receives eventually runs out of the people and the money that keep it going, and the software you rely on today is only there tomorrow if enough of the organisations using it put something back.
So our advice is simple. If an open source project works for you and your organisation benefits from it, support the people behind it: a donation to the foundation that runs it, a subscription from the company that develops it, or a contribution of your own, whether that is code, testing, documentation, translation or a well reported bug. It costs a fraction of the licence it replaces, and it keeps the choice you have made open to you and everyone else.
Everyday documents, letters, reports and ordinary spreadsheets and presentations, open and edit well in all four suites. Where differences appear is in complex layouts, heavily styled templates and anything that relies on macros. OnlyOffice and Euro-Office are built around Microsoft's DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats; LibreOffice and Collabora Online work natively in ODF and convert Microsoft formats as they open and save them. The only reliable test is your own documents, which is why every project starts with an assessment of a sample of them and a pilot.
It depends on how you work. LibreOffice suits people who work at a desktop, including offline, and organisations that want ODF as their standard. Collabora Online suits browser-based co-editing with a LibreOffice engine and ODF at its core. OnlyOffice suits organisations whose documents are mostly exchanged in Microsoft formats. Euro-Office offers a similar browser experience to OnlyOffice under a European coalition, as a younger project. Many organisations combine a desktop suite with a browser editor. We assess your documents and working patterns and recommend one, with our reasons.
Euro-Office is a fork of OnlyOffice, released under the AGPLv3, with its first stable release on 9 June 2026. OnlyOffice has publicly disputed the fork's licensing and suspended its partnership with Nextcloud, while Nextcloud and the Free Software Foundation dispute OnlyOffice's reading. We do not take a side, and we are not in a position to give legal advice on it. What we do is set out what the dispute could mean for your deployment, and design it so that your documents stay on your file platform, so that the editor in front of them can be changed later without moving the files.
Yes. We host the document server on GEN Cloud in our own UK data centres, integrated with your file platform, or we install and support it on your own servers if you prefer to keep it on your premises. Either way your documents stay where you decide they should be.
Often not. VBA macros run partially or not at all in the open suites, and many add-ins are written only for Microsoft Office. Power Query and data model workbooks do not convert, but the job they do can usually be rebuilt: LibreOffice Base connects to databases such as MariaDB and PostgreSQL and to ODBC and JDBC sources, runs the queries, and feeds the results to pivot tables in Calc. We identify these during the assessment, so you know which spreadsheets and templates need to be rebuilt, replaced or kept on Microsoft Office before anybody moves.
LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE and Collabora Online are free to license, and the two browser editors run on a server you host yourself, which can be almost anywhere that runs Docker. Microsoft 365 Business Standard is £10.80 and Google Workspace Business Standard £11.80 per user per month, excluding VAT, and their premium and plus plans cost more. Microsoft and Google include email and storage in that price, so we look at what you use alongside the office suite as well as the suite itself.
No. Many organisations run a mixed estate, with most staff on an open suite and a smaller group, such as finance, staying on Microsoft Office where their work depends on it. GEN are a Microsoft partner and support Microsoft 365 as well, so we can support both sides of a mixed estate and advise honestly on where the line should fall.
Some. The open suites will be familiar to anybody used to Microsoft Office, but menus, shortcuts and some features differ, and staff who build templates or complex spreadsheets benefit most from structured sessions. GEN provide training remotely or on site, one to one or in groups, alongside the migration.