[PontifexMinimus]

> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure,

I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source.

> and more expensive to the tax payer

As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.

[stickfigure]

> As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible

After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?

[ehnto]

The assumption here seems to be that the government would be writing the software, but it would go out to market. This would be a fantastic opportunity for a local software company to put out something in the space. I'm foreseeing more of this kind of thing as data sovereignty becomes a more considered issue by governments.

The other undertone I'm getting from this thread is that people think America has a monopoly on building software, and that's simply not the case. It's not hard to find companies doing really good work outside of the US. There is also nothing special about Office 365, it doesn't have a technology moat, it just has a surmountable interoperability moat and a social moat.

[PontifexMinimus]

Zero. Start off with using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Then add stuff as needed.