Nextcloud Office: your privacy upgrade as Microsoft Office end-of-life approaches

By 2025 the most popular Microsoft Office products fall out of support, including the most widely used Office versions: Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019. Microsoft’s recommendation? Move, of course, to their subscription-only Microsoft 365 offering which changes the scope of data privacy, access, and the financial relationship SME’s depend on — becoming subject to sudden price changes, like the previous up-to-25% price hikes.

We believe there’s a need for a real alternative.

The clock is ticking

Currently more than 80% of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) in Germany use Microsoft Office packages that will have reached end-of-life next year, including Office 2016 and Office 2019. Essentially, „support for Office 2016 and Office 2019 will end on October 14, 2025 and there will be no extension and no extended security updates.“ states Microsoft. Without an upgrade „you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks.“ And… they’re right.

Why businesses hesitate with Microsoft 365

Microsoft’s recommendation to move to Microsoft 365 carries significant implications for essential everyday office tools in enterprises. Data show that enterprises are hesitating to upgrade, with market share of Office 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2019 remaining stable in the last 24 months. Why the hesitation to upgrade?

We can think of a few reasons.

The financial implications

The soon-to-expire versions of Microsoft Office follow the traditional licensing model, which SMEs expect and appreciate for it’s predictability. With Microsoft’s suggested move to Office 365, that model gets thrown away for the monthly subscription model with cloud services. Which leads us to question…

Price control: increased prices at any time

There’s an incentive to lock you into recurring pricing through subscriptions that cause price control: the ability for them to raise prices at any point, leaving SMEs at the mercy of their new subscription overlords.

The reason this is so effective?

Cancelling is painful: the vendor lock-in guarantee

Subscription models provide a perfect vendor lock-in scenario, creating this dependency and making it both difficult and costly to switch providers if the service does not meet expectations. Another step to this vendor lock-in includes the technical challenges associated with a massive migration from a subscription service.

What about my data privacy?

Is it acceptable that internal documents, Intellectual Property, and private communications are the new building blocks for Microsoft’s AI models?

Moving to Microsoft 365 also drastically changes the expectations of data privacy, sovereignty, and transparency. With the suggestion to move the entire office suite to Microsoft’s cloud, your data may no longer be solely yours.

Microsoft’s Privacy Statement even states „As part of our efforts to improve and develop our products, we may use your data to develop and train our AI models.“

Even the European Commission this year was found to infringe on its own EU data protection laws through its use of Microsoft 365, which „failed […] to ensure that personal data transferred outside the EU are afforded an essentially equivalent level of protection as guaranteed in the EU.“

Nextcloud Office: refreshing alternative to Microsoft technologies

Nextcloud Office presents a migration path that addresses all of these Big Tech problems, from the grips of vendor lock-in to the critical data privacy concerns. It’s your ideal Microsoft 365 alternative!

By allowing self-hosting on secure and self-controlled servers, or with trusted sovereign cloud hosting partners, Nextcloud Office prioritizes your data sovereignty and GDPR compliance. This gives Nextcloud an edge over Microsoft 365, where data is stored on Microsoft’s servers and may be subject to access by US authorities.

In addition to real-time collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, Nextcloud Office also seamlessly integrates with other Nextcloud apps like Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud Groupware applications, enhancing overall team productivity.

Success in Germany’s federal state

From the public sector, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany migrated away from the grasp of subscription models into Nextcloud’s suite of open source, data sovereign solutions including Nextcloud Office. This transition has been explored in details by Schleswig-Holstein’s CIO Sven Thomsen in a recent episode of the Nextcloud Podcast.

With the adoption of Nextcloud Office in the last years, the value proposition that Nextcloud put into place totally changed for us: Nextcloud migrated in our view from a simple OneDrive alternative to becoming our central hub for collaboration and collaborative document editing. From an IT operations point of view, Nextcloud being open source is the perfect implementation path as a new solution.

Sven Thomsen

CIO of Schleswig-Holstein

Migrating to Nextcloud? Let us help!

We can directly help you migrate to Nextcloud Enterprise or to one of our trusted partners. We offer support for migration from a multitude of platforms, and encourage you to contact our sales team.

To smooth the transition, Nextcloud also supports many Microsoft integrations to make the journey a success!

Nextcloud Office: Your new path forward

As Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 reach their end-of-life milestones, SMEs face a critical decision, and an opportunity for a better path forward.

An upgrade to Nextcloud Office prioritizes your data privacy, sovereignty, compliance, and vendor lock-in freedoms. Our open source suite of solutions allows SMEs to maintain control over their sensitive business information and avoid the risks associated with Big Tech’s cloud-based services.

Don’t get left behind by the changing landscape of Microsoft’s products. Join the growing community of organizations that have successfully migrated to Nextcloud Office.

Take control of your data and your future.

Explore Nextcloud Office

Your update journey to a more private and collaborative document editing.

Learn more!