Software: With the Microsoft strategy against Microsoft: How Open Desk should become an Office alternative

Berlin. In the fall of 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) made a decision that caused a stir in the technology world. The institution feared that it could lose access to software from American providers such as Microsoft because of US sanctions against it - and looked for alternatives that could not be switched off by decree from Washington.

The court found what it was looking for in Zendis, a state-owned company from Germany. The institution in The Hague now relies on Open Desk, an open-source program package that is intended to offer alternatives to Word, Excel, Outlook and Onedrive. The Court is the most prominent user.

But a problem arose with the prestigious customer: the ICC suddenly made Open Desk known - and triggered a demand that Zendis could not cope with. “With our previous setup, we were unable to meet the enormous demand,” said co-managing director Leonhard Kugler to the Handelsblatt. The company has sold licenses for more than 200,000 office workstations. But according to the manager, the majority of requests had to be rejected last year. A lot has happened at Zendis since then.