Austrian Ministry of Economy Migrates 1,200 Employees to Nextcloud for Data Sovereignty

Austria’s Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism (BMWET) has completed a major IT migration, moving 1,200 employees from Microsoft’s cloud services to Nextcloud, an open-source platform hosted on Austrian-controlled infrastructure. The initiative, revealed during the Nextcloud Enterprise Day Copenhagen 2025 event, reflects Austria’s growing commitment to digital sovereignty and data protection within Europe. The transition took just four months, an unusually short timeframe for a government project of this scale, and was carried out in collaboration with Atos Austria and Nextcloud’s own team to meet legal, technical, and organizational standards. Instead of completely abandoning Microsoft tools, BMWET adopted a hybrid approach, continuing to use Microsoft Teams for external meetings while relying on Nextcloud for internal collaboration and secure file management. Integration with Outlook via Sendent ensured a familiar workflow for email and calendar management. The decision followed a risk analysis showing that foreign cloud services failed to comply with GDPR and the upcoming NIS2 directive. To ensure employee readiness, BMWET organized comprehensive training, internal documentation, and awareness campaigns. According to CIO Martin Ollrom, user feedback was positive, and disruptions were minimal. CISO Florian Zinnagl emphasized that the ministry’s responsibility for sensitive data requires avoiding dependence on non-European providers, reinforcing Europe’s push for technological independence.