Less dependent on US technology: a practical step-by-step plan
You do not have to remove everything American tomorrow. But you can replace the parts with good European alternatives now. Here is how to go about it.
These articles are available in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish.
Most European companies work with US services every day: Microsoft 365, Teams, OneDrive, WhatsApp, cloud storage and, increasingly, US AI. Personal data and business information go there, for storage, synchronisation, security or analysis.
For a long time the question was mainly legal: is this allowed under the GDPR? Since the US Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework has been under pressure. But there is a second question that matters at least as much: how dependent is your company on suppliers that must comply with US rules and sanctions?
It is about more than privacy
In 2025, the International Criminal Court in The Hague found out what dependency means. Because of US sanctions, US services for the staff concerned came under pressure. Since then the Court has been replacing Microsoft software with European open source. No data transfer was involved: the problem was simply that a US company must follow US rules, even when its customer is in Europe.
That does not make US technology unusable. But for the parts where good European alternatives exist, there is less and less reason to wait until a legal or political problem forces your hand.
Do not leave it to staff to separate the data
A common suggestion is: keep using Microsoft and US AI, but do not send sensitive data there. In practice that does not work. Staff would have to decide for every email, every document, every Teams attachment and every AI query whether it is allowed. With thousands of actions a day, mistakes happen, and the company also has to monitor and record it all.
It is better to set up the environment so that it goes right by default.
What you can replace today
| Component | European route | Feasibility |
|---|---|---|
| Servers and cloud | European provider with no US parent, EEA locations only | High |
| Mail, calendar, contacts | European mail environment | High |
| Files and sharing | European storage with sync | High |
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint | Collabora Online or LibreOffice | High for ordinary office work |
| Chat and video calls | European chat and Jitsi | High |
| AI | Mistral, preferably on your own European infrastructure | Improving, not equal for every task |
| Windows | Linux where possible, Windows where necessary | Medium to high |
| Smartphones | Few real alternatives beyond Apple and Google | Low |
| Backup | A second, independent European location | High |
The hard parts are mainly heavy Excel models with macros, Power BI, some industry-specific software, and smartphones. But for ordinary office work, a European environment is far more realistic than it was a few years ago.
An order that works
- Start with the foundation: the servers and the backup. Choose a European provider with no US parent, and look not only at the server location but also at who manages it, who provides support and where the backups are kept.
- Then mail, calendar and files. That is the bulk of the daily data flow, and the easiest to move.
- Then documents, chat and meetings. This is where you reduce dependency the most: Teams and SharePoint go.
- AI as a separate step. Use a European model for anything involving personal data and customer information, and keep the strongest US models only for tasks without sensitive data.
- Finally, the exceptions. Isolate industry software and Windows programs that genuinely have no alternative.
Where Binadit Workspace helps
Steps 2 and 3 are exactly what Binadit Workspace covers in one package: mail, calendar, contacts, Drive, documents in the browser, video meetings with co-editing, booking pages, secure file receipt and business chat. All on servers in the Netherlands, from a Dutch company, with one login. Northmail also works alongside Exchange and Gmail, so you can switch at your own pace.
The goal does not have to be that every US service disappears tomorrow. It is that your company no longer depends on a supplier you have no control over, for the parts where that is no longer necessary. Work out what it costs or request a demo.