According to a survey conducted by “Tagesspiegel Background” the federal states of Germany spent over 191.7 million Euros on Microsoft products last year. The data comes from a survey where ten of the sixteen states reported their expenditures since 2021.
These figures indicate a significant upward trend: the average cost across the ten states has increased by about 16.8 percent annually over the past years. Comparing the 104.3 million Euros spent in 2021 to the recent total of 191.7 million Euros shows an overall cost increase of nearly 84 percent over five years.
Among the participating states, North Rhine-Westphalia reported the largest spending, accumulating over 180.2 million Euros over the five-year period. Sources noted that the reported total for North Rhine-Westphalia is likely even higher, as data from the Ministry of the Interior is missing. This was followed by Lower Saxony, with 159.1 million Euros, and Baden-Württemberg, which spent approximately 110.4 million Euros. Six other states-Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Bavaria, and Rhineland-Palatinate-did not provide spending figures.
The increased expenditures are attributed by the states to several factors, including a greater need for IT infrastructure and changes in the manufacturers’ licensing models. Specifically, Microsoft is increasingly transitioning its services to the cloud rather than selling them as local installations, compounded by rising security requirements and new functionalities incorporated into the products, making them more expensive.
Alexander Britz, who manages Microsoft’s public sector business in Germany, expressed a degree of concern when reviewing such figures, stating that these sums are not the amounts that directly reach Microsoft. He explained that Microsoft does not sell directly to governmental entities. Instead, the company sells to designated commercial partners-IT firms-which then sell the products to public IT service providers, who finally deliver the goods and services to the states.
