ZenDiS creates additional subscription options for openDesk

Bochum/Berlin, 30.09.2025 The Center for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration (ZenDiS) is opening up sales of the openDesk office and collaboration suite to public and private IT service providers. This is the company's response to the strong demand for its sovereign digital workplace solution from public administration and the private sector.

openDesk is a sovereign open source alternative to market-dominating, mostly American, office solutions. ZenDiS developed openDesk on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). The product suite combines all the functions of a modern workplace solution under one interface: shared file and document management, e-mail, contacts and calendar, chat and video conferencing, project and task management, wiki and notes as well as identity and access management. It is based on tried-and-tested open source applications from leading German and European providers and brings them together in a highly integrated solution. openDesk can be obtained as a SaaS offering from a sovereign German data center or operated in your own data center (on-premise).

Distribution model follows demand

Since the market launch of openDesk in October 2024, there has been great interest in the solution. Public institutions from federal, state and local authorities want to purchase openDesk, as do research and educational institutions and government organizations from abroad. By September, more than 80,000 workstations in public administration had been successfully migrated to openDesk - and the trend is rising sharply. In recent months, interest from the private sector has also risen sharply, particularly from regulated industries.

Until now, openDesk has only been available via ZenDiS and only for the public sector. In order to meet the high demand from the public sector more quickly and to enable interested parties from the private sector to purchase the product, ZenDiS will be supplementing its direct sales with an indirect sales model in future. The sales partner program addresses both public and private IT service providers who offer openDesk "full service", i.e. including operation and support, as a SaaS solution or managed service.

Tendering for private IT service providers from November

Public IT service providers can now work with ZenDiS. The marketing licenses for private IT service providers will be put out to public tender. The European tender is scheduled to start in November 2025. In this context, ZenDiS will also invite tenders for licenses for training providers and subscription providers. The latter will provide private IT service providers with the bundled enterprise licenses of the component manufacturers required for the professional operation of openDesk.

"By opening up our sales to IT service providers, we can meet the demand for openDesk more broadly and more quickly," explains ZenDiS Managing Director Alexander Pockrandt. "This is a real milestone for the availability of openDesk and thus also for more digital sovereignty far beyond the administration."

About ZenDiS

The Center for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration (ZenDiS) was founded in 2022 by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs (BMI). As a competence and service center, ZenDiS supports public administration at federal, state and municipal level in securing its ability to act in the digital space in the long term - above all by eliminating critical dependencies on individual technology providers. To this end, ZenDiS is concentrating on promoting the use of open source software in public administration in the first expansion phase. ZenDiS is a limited liability company and is currently wholly owned by the federal government. A participation of the federal states is in preparation. ZenDiS is based in Bochum.