Global outage at Microsoft: Emails, video, storage... What other alternatives to Google are possible?

Many companies, administrations and individuals around the world are currently experiencing their painful dependence on GAFAM. Microsoft's global outage, underway since Thursday evening, leaves millions of users without a solution, suddenly returning them almost to the pre-Internet era of work.

And to anticipate if, in the future, such a situation were to recur, what alternatives exist to these services, apart from the Google environment? Overview, starting with French solutions.

French alternatives

The BlueMind publisher claims more than 500 clients, “from SMEs to ministries”. Offering professional messaging with calendar, contacts and collaborative tools such as organizing videoconferencing, this solution presents as an argument the fact of being compatible with Outlook, which “allows you to exit the Microsoft ecosystem without breaking usage”.

In the same vein, Mailo offers email, calendar, storage, videoconferencing and an online document editor. And a little bonus, this French Tech SME announced at the beginning of September that its servers, hosted in France at Ecritel, are now powered by 100% renewable electricity.

More confidential and reserved for higher education and research establishments in France, with data hosted on sovereign servers on French territory, the Renater Sharing service developed since 2014, recently welcomed all CNRS services. A special feature of this network is that it is based on 10,000 km of optical fiber to guarantee users very high Internet speed for sharing and working together on large files.

European alternatives

This is undoubtedly the best-known alternative to Microsoft and Google for email and related services. Coming from Switzerland, Proton first became known for its encrypted messaging and today offers diaries, storage drives and videoconferencing. Its main competitor is Infomaniak, created in 1994 in Geneva, it offers a complete range.

The German Tuta also relied on end-to-end encryption to gain the trust of its users. However, Tuta does not offer a videoconferencing service although it is possible to add this function, as well as drive storage via the Nextcloud platform, compatible with other services such as Proton.

Foreign alternatives

Obviously there is Apple which operates in the ecosystem of its brand but keeps its users captive and does not resolve the solution of dependence on GAFAM.

As an email service stricto sensu, the solutions are innumerable, the Americans Yahou or GMX (formerly Caramail), Sapo Mail in Portugal, Interia in Poland, Terra Mail in Brazil, ETECSA in Cuba… each country has email address providers generally linked to their historic Internet operators.