On 21 May 2026, the City of Zurich communicated a decision that many in the sovereignty debate would have preferred not to hear: Microsoft 365 stays in place for now. The study by the City of Zurich and Bern University of Applied Sciences attests that openDesk “meets the functional requirements of regular office work in many areas.” But not all of them. According to the study, a complete switch is missing “central elements of a modern computer workplace.”
This is less a defeat than a well-founded inventory of the open construction sites.
TL;DR: The City of Zurich is postponing its Microsoft 365 exit. The accompanying study identifies five concrete gaps in openDesk: (1) external telephony with phone numbers, (2) friction-free video calls with external participants, (3) real apps for phone and desktop instead of browser-only, (4) click-based automation like Power Automate, and (5) operations automation and cybersecurity. AUTARQ Desk closes three of these today (automation via OneAI, connectivity via AUTARQ Network, identity via Nubus IAM, device management via the Relution add-on) and integrates established third-party solutions for the remaining two (telephony, video experience).
At AUTARQ we build our platform AUTARQ Desk directly on top of openDesk CE, and we know these gaps from the implementation side. This post summarizes what the study actually finds, why the findings are solid, which of the gaps AUTARQ Desk closes today, and which it does not.
What does the Zurich study actually say about openDesk?
Two things up front that get lost in the headline noise:
First, openDesk passes the practical check quite well in many areas. The authors note that openDesk meets most chat requirements and essential file-manager requirements. All core email functions are met, the calendar fulfils “all functional requirements,” and the presentation software also makes “a good impression.”
Second, the finding is explicitly a snapshot. The study points out that ZenDiS continues to develop openDesk with monthly updates. Comparing today’s openDesk to M365 means comparing a product that looked materially different six months ago and will look different again six months from now.
Even so, the Organisation und Informatik Zürich (OIZ), the city’s IT authority behind the evaluation, is correct: a productive complete switch for a large public administration is not feasible with openDesk alone today. Let’s look at why.
What are the five gaps in openDesk according to the Zurich study?
openDesk is the open-source office suite from the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS), developed as a Microsoft 365 alternative for German public administration. It bundles Nextcloud (files), OX App Suite (mail, calendar), Element/Matrix (chat), Jitsi (video conferencing), Collabora (office), and OpenProject (projects) into one integrated stack. From the Heise reporting and the it-markt coverage, the gaps identified in the Zurich study can be extracted cleanly:
1. External telephony with phone numbers. Classic Teams calling scenario: inbound and outbound calls to the public phone network, bound to each employee’s personal extension. openDesk does not deliver this.
2. Friction-free video calls with external participants. Jitsi (part of the openDesk stack) works in principle, but the low-friction joining experience for external participants that M365 Teams defined is not at the same UX level.
3. Native apps instead of browser-only. Because openDesk runs entirely in the browser, the study notes that some functions are limited compared to an installed application. Concretely: notifications directly on the lock screen, quickly sharing files from other apps, and access to smartcards (for example a staff ID card).
4. Low-code automation. Power Automate has built a shadow economy of “small workflows” in many public administrations. Anyone replacing M365 has to absorb that, otherwise adoption tips over.
5. Operations automation and cybersecurity. The it-markt report adds: “openDesk does not provide functions for operations automation, telephony, or cybersecurity, for example.” That covers central device management, access controls, protection against attacks on endpoints, and end-to-end logging across the entire environment — the same functional scope that Microsoft Intune and the Defender bundle deliver today.
On top of that comes the economic finding that often gets lost in the discussion: openDesk is, according to the study, more than half more expensive than comparable Microsoft packages. That is not a software issue, but an issue of the operating models offered today. More on that below.
How realistic is a complete Microsoft 365 exit?
The study highlights the Schleswig-Holstein example, which is going through a migration process, although not from Microsoft’s current software but from older on-premise Office versions. There, a single-digit percentage of employees still depend on Office products, in particular heavy-Excel users in the tax administration.
That is the most honest number in the entire study. Anyone claiming that an established public administration can be migrated 100 percent to an open-source suite without some Excel power user with a 47-tab macro spreadsheet protesting has never done a migration. The realistic question is not “does openDesk replace M365 to 100 percent” but “can we operate 92 to 96 percent of workloads sovereignly, with a controlled exception defined for the rest?”
That is exactly where AUTARQ Desk comes in.
How does AUTARQ Desk close the openDesk gaps?
AUTARQ Desk is a managed sovereign workspace for Europe, operated by MWAY DIGITAL GmbH from Stuttgart. We build on openDesk CE as the base, stay AGPLv3-compliant, and add three of our own layers that address exactly the gaps identified in the Zurich study. AUTARQ Desk is not an openDesk clone and not a competitor to ZenDiS, but a productive distribution with additional layers.
Architecture overview: The AUTARQ Desk platform consists of three layers plus optional add-ons:
- AUTARQ Sovereign Layer with OneAI (sovereign AI with RAG and agents), Nubus IAM (identity and access), and AUTARQ Network (a per-tenant private mesh network).
- openDesk Workspace as the base: files, office, chat, video, mail, and projects as integrated applications.
- Sovereign hosting exclusively in German data centers, with full tenant isolation.
- Optional add-ons for specific use cases, for example Relution for MDM/UEM, Zammad for service management, or customer-specific Helm workloads.
flowchart TB
OneAI["OneAI<br/>Sovereign AI"]
Nubus["Nubus IAM<br/>Identity & Access"]
NET["AUTARQ Network<br/>Private Mesh Network"]
Workspace["openDesk Workspace<br/>Files · Office · Chat · Video · Mail · Projects"]
Host["Sovereign Hosting<br/>Data centers in Germany"]
OneAI --> Workspace
Nubus --> Workspace
NET --> Workspace
Workspace --> Host
style OneAI fill:#1a8a7a,color:#fff,stroke:#0e5e52
style Nubus fill:#1a8a7a,color:#fff,stroke:#0e5e52
style NET fill:#1a8a7a,color:#fff,stroke:#0e5e52AUTARQ Network closes the connectivity gap
To let employees securely access the workspace from anywhere — on the road or from home — many public organizations today rely on services from US vendors. We build this ourselves: every customer gets a dedicated, encrypted network that runs exclusively in German data centers. Access stays secure, without any data taking a detour through US providers.
OneAI closes the automation gap (and more)
OneAI is our enterprise AI platform, integrated directly into the openDesk stack. Concretely:
- Automation instead of low-code tinkering. Where public administrations use Power Automate today for “mail comes in, extract PDF, file in case-management system,” OneAI defines agents that handle this with a traceable audit log. Gap 4 is not replaced 1:1, but superseded by a more modern model that, in most cases, requires less configuration effort.
- AI models on our own hardware. Our AI runs on dedicated hardware in a German data center. No data leaves Europe, no risk that your content is used to train models, and no mixing of data between customers.
- RAG on Nextcloud content. Employees ask their documents instead of searching for them. That is the feature called “Copilot” in M365, which we deliver without exporting data into Microsoft’s backend.
Relution closes the MDM gap (add-on)
Gap 5 from the Zurich study covers, in addition to logging, the classic endpoint management piece that M365 Intune delivers today: register devices, enforce security policies, distribute apps, wipe lost devices remotely, and gate access based on device state. We integrate exactly this piece via Relution, a platform from Germany for the central management of all endpoints.
Relution covers all relevant platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Android, Windows, ChromeOS, and Linux), is certified by Germany’s BSI, and has been in productive use at German school authorities, public agencies, and enterprises for years. We offer Relution as an add-on in the same German hosting stack as the rest of AUTARQ Desk, with single sign-on via Nubus IAM and a shared tenant model. The jump from “M365 with Intune” to AUTARQ Desk plus Relution is therefore not an architectural break, but a 1:1 replacement with German hosting and GDPR-compliant data handling.
Which gaps AUTARQ Desk still leaves open today
To be honest: points 1 and 2 of the Zurich gap list are not in our core scope.
External telephony with phone numbers: We connect to existing telephony systems, but we are not a telephony provider ourselves. Anyone who wants phone and workspace tightly integrated combines AUTARQ Desk with a telephony provider such as 3CX, Nfon, or a sovereign Swiss provider. That is integration work, not an out-of-the-box click.
Friction-free video calls with external participants: Here we use Jitsi from the openDesk stack. Jitsi made significant progress in 2025, but “click the link and you are in, with the correct mic and camera, in under ten seconds” is Teams-level, and Jitsi achieves that in only a subset of browser configurations. This is nothing we can solve with our own layers. This is upstream work on the openDesk project, and we are contributing.
Native apps: For the most critical workflows (mail, calendar, files), mature native apps already exist for the individual components (Nextcloud, OX, Element) on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. In parallel, we are actively building a consolidated AUTARQ Desk App that integrates these core components into a unified surface and is available across platforms: desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux) and mobile (iOS, Android) from one codebase. Until the productive release, the combination of the native component apps and the browser access covers the full feature scope.
Is openDesk really more expensive than Microsoft 365?
The study criticizes openDesk packages as “more than half more expensive” than M365. That is an important number, and it says more about today’s operating models than about the software itself.
openDesk is open source. License costs are zero. What costs money is operations, support, SLAs, and the commercial components (OX App Suite Enterprise, Nextcloud Enterprise, Collabora Online, Element Enterprise). The prices called out on the market today are often not competitive with M365 E3/E5 because they are insufficiently optimized for scale and fragment into individual contracts with each vendor.
Our pricing model for AUTARQ Desk works per user per month and bundles openDesk CE plus AUTARQ layers plus infrastructure in a German data center. We communicate concrete numbers individually per tenant size, but the target is clear: we aim to land below the M365 E3 price level, not above. Anyone migrating 1,500+ seats should not pay a sovereignty premium. We have put together the direct feature comparison AUTARQ Desk vs. openDesk vs. Microsoft 365 on our product page.
Frequently asked questions
Which MDM solution replaces Microsoft Intune in AUTARQ Desk?
For mobile device management and unified endpoint management we integrate Relution as an add-on. Relution is a UEM platform developed in Germany, certified by Germany’s BSI, covering iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Android, Windows, ChromeOS, and Linux, and has been in productive use at German school authorities, public agencies, and enterprises for years. We operate Relution in the same German hosting stack as the rest of AUTARQ Desk, with single sign-on via Nubus IAM.
Where is AUTARQ Desk hosted?
AUTARQ Desk is hosted exclusively in Germany, primarily at Hetzner in German data centers. Multi-tenant isolation is enforced at the Kubernetes namespace level. There is no data flow into US clouds, so Schrems II risks in the data flow are structurally excluded.
How do existing Microsoft 365 data sets migrate to AUTARQ Desk?
The migration path depends on the existing tenant and Microsoft policies. Typical paths are email via IMAP or Exchange export, calendars and contacts via ICS, CSV, CalDAV, or CardDAV, and files from OneDrive and SharePoint into Nextcloud via export, rclone, or APIs. Teams chats and proprietary workflows are reviewed case by case because retention rules, export formats, and permissions vary significantly between tenants.
How does OneAI differ from Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is tightly connected to Microsoft Graph and Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. OneAI runs as an AUTARQ layer in the German hosting stack, accesses tenant data such as Nextcloud content through controlled connectors, and processes workflows through agents with an audit log. The goal is not only chat on top of documents, but sovereign automation without data flowing into US clouds.
We are looking for pilot customers
We are not building AUTARQ Desk as a concept but as a productive platform with first tenants already in operation. What we need now is scaling across more real-world workloads.
Specifically, we are looking for the first pilot customers for AUTARQ Desk. What we offer:
- Discounted terms for the first twelve months
- Direct architecture and migration support from our team
- Co-definition of roadmap priorities (in particular for the gaps still open above)
- A productive tenant, not a sandbox toy
If that describes what you are planning, write to us at hello@autarq.now or reach me directly on LinkedIn. Bring your M365 tenant scope, the top three workflows that today do not work without M365, and a realistic timeframe. We respond within 48 hours with an honest assessment of whether a pilot setup makes sense for your case.
The Zurich study did not show that digital sovereignty does not work. It showed which layers still need work. We are working on exactly those layers. Help us make the work faster.
AUTARQ is the brand of MWAY DIGITAL GmbH from Stuttgart and builds the sovereign managed cloud platform for Europe. AUTARQ Desk is our sovereign agentic workspace based on openDesk CE, augmented with OneAI, Nubus IAM, and AUTARQ Network, optionally extensible with add-ons such as Relution for MDM/UEM. All components run in German data centers, with AGPLv3-compliant stack composition and full tenant isolation at the Kubernetes level.
Trademark notice: Nubus is a trademark of Univention GmbH. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, Teams, Intune, and Power Automate are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. openDesk is a trademark of the Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS). All other product and company names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners and are used here solely for identification purposes.