Please note: Most, if not all, of the articles published at this website were completed by Chat GPT (chat.openai.com) and/or copied and possibly remixed from other websites or Feedzy or WPeMatico or RSS Aggregrator or WP RSS Aggregrator. No copyright infringement is intended. If there are any copyright issues, please contact: bicycledays@yahoo.com.
Comply with ZDNET: Add us as a most popular supply on Google.
ZDNET’s key takeaways
France is dropping US videoconferencing companies in favor of its personal open-source program.
Visio is being deployed now and can substitute different companies by 2027.
Visio is a part of a a lot bigger EU transfer to digital sovereignty.
It is not concerning the French authorities not trusting US tech firms… Sorry, truly, it’s. It is all about France not trusting American firms with its knowledge or companies.
As David Amiel, France’s minister-delegate for the civil service and state reform, put it: France is dedicated “to regaining our digital independence. We can not danger having our scientific exchanges, our delicate knowledge, and our strategic improvements uncovered to non-European actors.”
So, France is pushing US tech giants out of the French authorities. They’re shifting civil servants off Microsoft Groups and Zoom and onto a homegrown videoconferencing platform referred to as Visio — all within the title of sovereign management over its digital infrastructure.
Paris has framed the choice as a strategic break from dependence on American cloud and collaboration platforms. The French authorities is explicitly linking it to a broader doctrine of “digital sovereignty.” This EU-based motion, which has been round for over a decade, is devoted to the proposition that EU nations ought to depend on native EU tech firms, cloud companies, and platforms.
Non‑European platforms won’t be renewed
EU officers argue that counting on US-hosted companies exposes authorities discussions to international legal guidelines, such because the 2018 US Cloud Act, which authorizes the US authorities to entry knowledge even when servers are positioned on European soil.
Shifting to the sensible particulars, below the brand new videoconferencing plan, the MIT-licensed, open-source Visio will probably be rolled out throughout all ministries and state companies, turning into the default and finally the unique videoconferencing software for French authorities staff. Visio has no relationship to the Microsoft diagramming and flowcharting program of the identical title.
Shifting ahead, licences for Zoom, Microsoft Groups, Google Meet, Webex, GoToMeeting, and all different non‑European platforms won’t be renewed as departments migrate, with full deployment focused by 2027.
France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) developed Visio as a sovereign videoconferencing platform for the French state. The Netherlands and Germany have additionally helped with its improvement. This system was constructed utilizing Django, the open-source Python internet framework; React, the JavaScript library for constructing consumer interfaces (UIs); and LiveKit, a scalable video conferencing system. Visio provides options resembling HD video calls, display sharing, and chat.
It has been examined for a few yr and already has roughly 40,000 common customers, with an enlargement path to some 200,000 staff within the close to time period.
Visio is a part of a broader Suite Numérique challenge, a household of open-source sovereign software program applications designed to interchange US companies resembling Gmail, Slack, and different collaboration instruments presently utilized by the French administration. As a contemporary conferencing product, Visio provides AI‑powered transcription and speaker identification, constructed with expertise from French begin‑up Pyannote, and integrates with current safe messaging methods like Tchap, which runs on the Matrix protocol.
Officers stated the software program stack was developed with help from France’s cybersecurity company ANSSI to harden encryption and meet nationwide safety necessities.
France is making this transfer not solely to help digital sovereignty and enhance safety. The Élysée can also be promoting the swap to save cash and stimulate native trade. Authorities estimates counsel that discontinuing exterior videoconferencing licences may save round 1 million euros per yr for each 100,000 customers who transfer to Visio. The transfer aligns intently with an EU‑stage push to cut back reliance on dominant US cloud and software program distributors; the European Parliament lately adopted resolutions urging extra management over important digital infrastructure and AI platforms.
When digital sovereignty turns into coverage
France’s pivot lands at a time of heightened transatlantic stress over knowledge safety, antitrust, and industrial coverage. It additionally sends a transparent sign that no less than one main EU state is, on the highest stage, keen to enshrine digital sovereignty as coverage reasonably than a distant aspiration. Many different EU entities — together with an Austrian ministry, the Austrian army, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Danish authorities organizations, and the French metropolis of Lyon — are dropping Microsoft applications in favor of homegrown European alternate options.
Not everybody in Europe is obsessed with digital sovereignty. Börje Ekholm, CEO of Swedish telecom gear agency Ericsson, lately stated at Davos that latest European discussions round sovereignty are “harmful,” and that makes an attempt to construct homegrown alternate options to US expertise would result in increased costs within the area.
Be that as it could, if Visio can match the usability and uptime of US firms whereas preserving knowledge inside European authorized jurisdiction, Paris might have created a template for different nations looking for to maneuver away from reliance on American expertise.
