Schleswig-Holstein Microsoft exit

Risk visible at

Risk: L2

→

Mitigated at

Mitigated: L4

— What happened

Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein announced a full migration from Microsoft Office and Windows across all public administration — replacing everything with open-source alternatives including LibreOffice and Linux. The migration exposed how deeply a government can become structurally dependent on a single vendor, making exit painful, costly, and multi-year even when political will exists.

— Root cause

No concentration ratio monitoring. No parallel sovereign alternative built before dependency became structural. No exit cost model. No switching cost assessment. Each individual procurement decision was rational; the aggregate created catastrophic lock-in.

— How our model mitigates this

Prevention (our model)

At Level 1, we establish concentration ratio monitoring — any single vendor exceeding 25% of productivity dependency triggers a mandatory diversification review. At Level 3, the sovereign stack is deployed and stress-tested in parallel before any cutover is initiated. The alternative is built first.

Detection (our observability)

An annually updated exit cost model estimates the cost and timeline to exit each major vendor. When switching cost exceeds 18 months of contract value, structural lock-in is flagged as CRITICAL. Staff workflow audits identify processes with no open-source alternative — flagged for parallel development.

— Our specific action

Schleswig-Holstein’s approach was correct — they built the alternative first, then migrated. Our model formalises this: we stress-test the sovereign stack under peak government load before any cutover, and ensure no department is ever migrated until the alternative has been certified operational.

— Source & reference

Published source

German state replaces Microsoft with open source, saves millions each year

Cybernews

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Sovereign

Schleswig-Holstein Microsoft exit

Published source

German state replaces Microsoft with open source, saves millions each year

Commission an assessment

Could this happen to you?

Citadel Sovereign Advisory