Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Swaps Microsoft SharePoint for Nextcloud, Targeting 50,000 Public Sector Workers
The German state has moved 5,000 employees off Microsoft SharePoint onto a self-hosted Nextcloud platform, with a long-term goal of 50,000 users as part of a digital sovereignty push.
Overview
The German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has replaced Microsoft SharePoint with a self-hosted deployment of the open-source collaboration platform Nextcloud, according to Tech.eu. Around 5,000 state employees are already using the new platform for file sharing, with a long-term goal of expanding it to more than 50,000 public-sector workers across ministries and municipal offices, as reported by It’s FOSS.
What We Know
- The rollout is being built and operated by DVZ M-V GmbH, the state’s IT service provider, according to Tech.eu.
- Nextcloud currently handles file sharing for the roughly 5,000 active users, and chat, videoconferencing, and groupware applications are planned to follow, according to It’s FOSS.
- “The transition away from Microsoft SharePoint has been completed step by step, without disruption or data loss for employees. Together with DVZ M-V, we have built a platform that runs reliably today and continues to expand step by step,” said Marco Anschütz, CIO of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, according to Tech.eu.
- “Digital sovereignty and open source are central goals and cornerstones of digitalisation policy in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. We plan to continue expanding the use of open source and promote common standards and open interfaces for IT solutions in the public sector. This is the only way for the state and municipalities to have the power to act in the future. This is exactly where we are starting with Nextcloud,” said Dr Heiko Geue, Minister of Finance and Digitalisation of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, according to Tech.eu.
- “With Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, yet another German state is now committing to Nextcloud as a sovereign collaboration platform – in close alignment with Schleswig-Holstein,” said Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud, according to Tech.eu.
- The project builds on a cooperation agreement Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s Ministry of Finance and Digitalization signed with the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein in late 2025 to strengthen digital sovereignty across both states, according to It’s FOSS.
- Beyond Nextcloud, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern uses OpenProject as an alternative to proprietary project management tools and has built its own administrative AI assistant, LEA, based on OpenWebUI, according to It’s FOSS.
- For now, the state is keeping Microsoft’s client operating systems in place and starting with the groupware and collaboration layer. The Register put it plainly: “This is not a Linux migration… yet.”
Regional and National Context
Schleswig-Holstein, the neighboring state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is coordinating with, has already migrated its email systems off Microsoft Exchange and Outlook and made LibreOffice mandatory across its administration, a move it expects will save more than €15 million a year in licensing costs, according to It’s FOSS. FOSS Force reports that Schleswig-Holstein’s own rollout of open-source tools, including its +1.Linux program, LibreOffice, Nextcloud, Open-Xchange, and Thunderbird, covers roughly 25,000 to 30,000 workplaces.
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s move follows similar efforts elsewhere in Europe. The Austrian Ministry of Economic Affairs has migrated around 1,200 staff members from Microsoft 365 to an on-premises LibreOffice- and Nextcloud-based platform hosted on Austrian infrastructure, while France’s Ministry of Education has rolled out Nextcloud to 400,000 employees with plans to extend it to all 1.2 million of its staff, according to FOSS Force.
Nationally, Germany’s Deutschland-Stack sovereign infrastructure framework limits public administration to the ODF and PDF/UA document formats, excluding Microsoft’s .doc, .ppt, and .xls formats, according to It’s FOSS. Nextcloud is also part of a wider European coalition: earlier this year the company joined forces with a group of European enterprises and community organizations to launch Euro-Office, a sovereign alternative to conventional office suites, as previously reported.
What We Don’t Know
The exact month the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern–Schleswig-Holstein cooperation agreement was signed is unclear, with sources giving slightly different timing in late 2025. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has not announced a timeline for expanding the Nextcloud deployment to chat, videoconferencing, and groupware, nor has it indicated any plan to migrate desktop operating systems away from Microsoft, according to The Register.
Analysis
The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern rollout is the latest data point in a broader European trend of governments moving public-sector IT away from U.S. cloud vendors and toward self-hosted open-source alternatives, a shift driven largely by concerns over digital sovereignty and vendor lock-in, as previously reported. With two adjoining German states now aligned on the same open-source stack, and comparable rollouts underway in Austria and France, the coordination between Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein could serve as a template other German states look to as they weigh similar moves.