Office suites: the cloud can double the bill without setting you free

Your IT lead gets the same renewal pitch as last year, with a twist: move to the cloud to keep updates and file sharing. The quote looks acceptable per seat. Then someone asks whether hosting is “sovereign” — and whether, in five years, you can still negotiate or leave without rebuilding email. That is not just a Paris debate: it is the office bill for any organisation that signed with a dominant vendor.

What the Court of Accounts just put in numbers

On 22 October 2026, France’s Court of Accounts publishes a citizens’ initiative report on office and collaboration tools in ministries (~860,000 seats, central administrations and deconcentrated services — not hospitals or local authorities). In 2025, the state spent about €100M there: €61M in licences, €26M in services, €13M in internal payroll. Microsoft accounts for nearly four fifths of licence spend, about €49M. Average cost is €116 per seat per year, with roughly half going to the vendor. The Court also notes weak asset tracking in several ministries: the figures remain estimates.

Sovereign hosting, vendor lock-in

The report contrasts two paths. Most ministries want to keep Microsoft and move to Microsoft 365 on Bleu — the French cloud (Orange, Capgemini) aiming for SecNumCloud qualification. For the Court, that improves the hosting frame, not technological and economic dependence on Microsoft. It argues instead for an open suite on cloud inside the state or with a SecNumCloud provider, convergence from 2027, and a three- to four-year migration plan.

Dinum orders of magnitude in the report stand out: about €100 per seat per year for an open suite in a qualified environment, versus €250 for Microsoft 365 — up to €130M annual gap if the whole studied scope adopted M365. Even without cloud, more systematic on-premise open tools could save €30–65M per year, the Court estimates, by extrapolating practices at the Economy and Interior ministries.

What it means for an SMB

You do not have 860,000 seats. The mechanism is the same: €116 on average while things stay controlled, €250 when you switch to the vendor’s cloud model — close to a doubling, before integration and training. The €20 (Interior, LibreOffice) vs €378 (Culture, M365) gap shows final price depends as much on how you run IT as on the logo. DGFiP reports 87% satisfaction on LibreOffice: the blocker is rarely “staff hate it”; it is migration, compatibility, macros, support.

• Before renewal: per-seat price over three years, exit cost (mail, files, accounts), and what happens if the vendor forces an upgrade tier.
• Qualified cloud or not: where data sits matters; who can change terms tomorrow matters just as much.
• Inventory: how many seats actually use the suite, how many pay “just in case” — the Court says that for the state; it is often fuzzy in SMBs too.

If an office renewal or cloud move is on the table this year-end, we can map your real scope and compare paths on one page — before the vendor’s calendar becomes yours.