Higher education institutions would like to become less dependent on American big tech—especially Microsoft. That’s no easy task, as the company keeps pulling more services into its ecosystem and taking work off institutions’ hands.

But according to SURF, the Dutch ICT cooperative for education and research, the “dominance of a few major tech companies is increasingly putting our independence and public values under pressure.” To give European alternatives a fair chance, SURF says it is “exploring other applications, such as Nextcloud.”

Tested

Nextcloud is a German software developer offering applications that many will immediately associate with Microsoft’s suite: word processing, email, file sharing, and online meetings. This year, SURF tested the software with several dozen staff members from five universities who collaborated within a single research program.

Many universities, university medical centers, and research institutes have since asked SURF if they, too, can start using Nextcloud, the organization wrote in a recent update.

Volunteers

So SURF is now recruiting volunteers—or rather: teams of at least twenty volunteers. One of the goals is to see how well the software supports collaboration. The organization hopes for participation from a wide variety of institutions, a spokesperson said: large and small, from applied sciences universities to vocational colleges to research universities.

SURF is not disclosing the cost publicly, “partly because it’s a complex calculation of things like upfront investments, existing infrastructure, allocation models, and one-time expenses,” the spokesperson noted. Ultimately, SURF will cover three-quarters of the cost; participating institutions will pay the remainder.

Around two thousand users will be able to test the new software. The pilot will initially run for one year.

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.