France abandons Zoom and Visio Groups as security fears and foreign surveillance concerns drive domestic software.
- France will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with Visio’s home platform
- Visio has been tested for a year and supports forty thousand users
- Visio’s AI transcription and speaker dialing is powered by French startup Pyannote
The French government has confirmed it will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with a home-grown video conferencing platform called Visio.
The change is scheduled to go into effect across all government departments by 2027 and is part of a broader strategy to reduce reliance on foreign software vendors.
Officials cited concerns about security, data sovereignty, and foreign surveillance capabilities as the main motivations for the move.
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 part of France’s Suite Numérique program to provide government officials with online collaboration tools to replace American online services.
Unlike commercial platforms, Visio and its associated tools are intended for government use only.
It is hosted in Outscale’s sovereign cloud, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, which ensures that all user data remains within French jurisdiction.
This infrastructure is expected to limit exposure to external network outages and potential regulatory pressures that have previously affected Europe’s reliance on US cloud providers.
Visio also includes AI-powered capabilities, including meeting transcribing and speaker dialing, developed alongside French startup Pyannote.
The government noted that switching to Visio could lead to significant cost savings and estimated a reduction of around €1 million per year for every 100,000 users.
Visio is part of a broader effort to integrate office software and other forms of productivity tools into government workflows.
By accepting local options, French managers aim to create a unified internal ecosystem that can replace many external applications.
The change also reflects broader European concerns about reliance on US IT infrastructure, especially after last year’s massive cloud outage.
“The aim is to eliminate the use of non-European solutions and to ensure the security and privacy of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and independent tool,” said David Amiel, minister of civil service and state reform.
“This strategy highlights France’s commitment to digital sovereignty amid tensions in the country and fears of foreign surveillance or disruption of services.”
While this initiative prioritizes data security and privacy, implementation will require extensive coordination and training.
Government IT departments must integrate Visio with existing internal systems and ensure service continuity during the transition.
Visio will offer more control, but its ability to fully match the performance and scale of established commercial platforms remains uncertain.
With Euronews
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