Vladimir Putin, the Russian President has called for more ‘digital sovereignty’ and the Moscow city council is obliging by uninstalling Microsoft Office.
The Moscow city government will switch away from Office. Firstly, on 6,000 computers and eventually the machines for all 600,000 employees.
It’ll be replaced by MyOffice from New Cloud Technologies based in Moscow and St Petersburg.
This change may hurt Microsoft’s sales a little. A lot more if it spreads to other parts of the Russian government and industries as well.
There are trade embargoes against Russia imposed after their invasion of Crimea and Ukraine. Those embargoes don’t appear to apply to MS Office except for very specific industries.
