Hypothetical about transferring away from US products and services.

The factors here are not just "never touch something based in the US". Microsoft online services, for example, have EU datacentres and operate under EU jurisdiction for EU users (proven in several international court cases). They have to. It's the law. If Microsoft (US) are asked to provide data on their EU users, Microsoft (EU) have been obliged to refuse and even take such demands to EU court rather than capitulate. We know, because that was a literal international lawsuit. It's also not to abandon everything you know, but it's to not be reliant on it, and not to expose things to it. For example, you are already 100% reliant on Windows, thus Microsoft (EU). Many companies are. The situation hasn't changed recently. Most places are and always have been. So that's a huge change for anyone. You can go to things that are less reliant - Linux, for example, isn't reliant on ANY country whatsoever. But the commercial distributions are individually reliant depending on their operation. I believe SUSE is entirely EU, for instance. So you have layers of things here: - Migrating your server OS. - Migrating your client OS. - Migrating your software. - Migrating your web etc. services. - Migrating your suppliers, contracts and agreements. You won't be able to do them all simultaneously, you won't be able to do them all completely on day one, and you certainly won't be able to do that all cheaply or simply and won't want to do them all in a panic. What you do is start plotting a non-US-dependent (you can use the US, just don't be dependent on it... i.e. make sure that you COULD run an alternative and keep yourself afloat for the transition period for that alternative... but you don't have to actually DO THAT yet) future. So you start with the low-hanging fruit. Could that VM be Linux? Could that webserver be Apache not IIS? Could those VMs now run on Proxmox instead of HyperV or VMWare? Now that you're backend is non-US, could you start migrating clients to a web-interface hosted in the EU instead of local software? Well... now that they're just web-clients, can't they just be moved to Linux machines rather than Windows? And so on. It's a huge, massive, set of incremental changes. Reducing *reliance* on the US at each step and planning what to do if the remaining US-reliant services shoot up in price, for example (tariffs? I mean, even VMWare being taken over by Broadcom made people migrate, nothing to do with being US-based!). Are there going to be export bans that stop Windows working in the rest of the world overnight? Highly unlikely. But if there were, what would you do? Maybe start laying the framework to reduce reliance on that. That Windows-only software... might start looking at replacing it. Ask the vendor. Seek an alternative. You don't have to change it out NOW and you're unlikely to suddenly be required to change it out on a day's notice, but you should know what the path would be if you WANTED to do that or were FORCED to. It's probably one of the biggest IT "upgrades" that you would ever be required to do. Rushing it is dumb (and, yes, I've had clients who rushed to replace Windows with Linux over the last 20 years and regretted it... which was particularly tough for me as I'm a Linux nut and have been for decades but, in their circumstances, the way they were doing things? I had to advise them to rip it out, revert and plan better next time). But equally, even ignoring the US: Why are your desktops "licenced per annum"? Why isn't your software just web-based and OS-independent and accessible by your employees wherever they are (e.g. working from home)? Why are you paying expensive Datacentre licences or VMWare to run a handful of VMs that sit mostly idle? And so on. It's a simple business case that's always been present, and which you would have ALWAYS benefited from (financially, resource-wise, productivity-wise etc.) if you'd done it at any point, so long as you did it properly. If I started a company today... I wouldn't allow MS software, VMWare or Oracle anywhere near it. I would literally ban purchases from them. I've been saying that for a long time. It's just that all my clients / employers want to use MS. For reasons that I disagree with, but there you go. I have to be paid to use Windows. I *choose* to use Linux myself. Even professionally, whenever a suitable opportunity arises. I find it strange that only now are people worrying about it because of the US events... which were always a possibility. I can find a thousand better reasons to migrate than what the US might twist Microsoft's arm to do (even illegally). I always have been able to.