- France will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with the national Visio platform
- Visio has been tested for a year and supports forty thousand users
- Visio’s AI transcription and speaker diarization are powered by French start-up Pyannote
The French government has confirmed that it will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with a nationally developed video conferencing platform called Visio.
The change is expected to be rolled out across all ministries by 2027 and is part of a broader strategy to reduce reliance on foreign software suppliers.
Officials cited concerns about security, data sovereignty and the potential for foreign surveillance as primary motivations for the decision.
Sovereign digital ecosystem
Visio has been in testing for about a year and already supports around 40,000 users within French government networks.
It is a central element of the French Suite Numérique project aimed at providing civil servants with online collaboration tools to replace American online services.
Unlike commercial platforms, Visio and its associated tools are intended exclusively for government use.
It is hosted on the sovereign cloud of Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, which guarantees that all user data remains under French jurisdiction.
This infrastructure should limit exposure to foreign network outages and potential regulatory pressures that have already affected Europe’s reliance on U.S. cloud providers.
Visio also integrates AI-powered features, including meeting transcription and speaker diarization, developed in collaboration with French start-up Pyannote.
The government noted that switching to Visio could result in significant savings and estimated a reduction of around €1 million per year per 100,000 users.
Visio is part of a broader effort to integrate alternative office software and productivity tools into government workflows.
By adopting local options, the French administration aims to create an internally coherent ecosystem, capable of replacing multiple foreign applications.
The shift also reflects a broader European concern about reliance on U.S. IT infrastructure, particularly after major cloud outages last year.
“The objective is to put an end to the use of non-European solutions and to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool,” said David Amiel, Minister of Civil Service and State Reform.
“This strategy highlights France’s commitment to digital sovereignty amid growing geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions.”
Although this decision prioritizes data security and sovereignty, its implementation will require extensive coordination and training.
Government IT departments must integrate Visio with existing internal systems and ensure continuity of service during the transition.
Visio will offer more control, but its ability to fully match the functionality and scalability of established business platforms remains uncertain.
Via Euronews
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