Nicolas Engel

NOAH: an open-source response to runaway proprietary infrastructures

1. Microsoft, hyper-dependency and the budget spiral

In IT departments, technology decisions face a reality few contest: Microsoft’s overwhelming dominance in IT infrastructure. From Active Directory (centralized identity system) to Exchange (once-essential enterprise email), Windows Server, and Azure, Microsoft has shaped enterprise IT for the past 20 years. But at what cost?

Today, a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription (the most comprehensive enterprise package) costs over 57 $ per user, per month in France. It includes Office, Teams, Power BI, as well as advanced security and compliance tools.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: IT departments still must purchase client access licenses (CALs) for every user or device connecting to a server, plus licenses for server operating systems, email, and support. At scale, this can amount to thousands of euros per month for a medium-sized organization.

Adding to that is the complexity of Microsoft environments, which often rely on tightly integrated and closed technologies. For instance, Active Directory is ubiquitous in companies, but hard to decouple or modernize.

As for mailing system, it continues to impose heavy administrative burdens, even though some sovereign IT strategies (notably in France or Germany) are now favoring a return to locally hosted alternatives, in response to sovereignty concerns.

The cost isn’t only financial. This complexity makes systems more exposed, more rigid, and requires ever more specialized IT teams. Moreover, cyber risks are intensifying.

In 2024, the estimated average cost of a cyberattack reached USD 4.88 million. Cybersecurity budgets in IT departments have grown by more than 50% since 2020 (rising from 8.6% to 13.2% of total IT budgets). Global cyberattack costs are projected to reach USD 10.5 trillion per year by 2025.

This is an unsustainable model—caught between technological dependence, security pressure, and budgetary drift .

2. Open source: interoperability, standards, resilience

In response to this pressure, open source is once again seen as a resilience strategy. Not for ideological reasons, but for economic, security, and sovereignty motives.

According to GitNux, adopting open-source could save global organizations up to USD 60 billion per year.

Rather than paying recurring subscriptions for bloated software suites, it becomes possible to refocus budgets on integration, security, and alignment with business processes. In short: reinvesting meaning into IT spend.

3. NOAH: sovereign, modular, secure architecture

NOAH is a concrete open-source response to these observations. This project provides a reference architecture for organizations wishing to:

Hosted on GitHub, NOAH offers a modular, extensible, and well-documented framework adaptable to different business contexts, organizational sizes, and digital maturity levels.

Real-world use cases:

What NOAH offers

Available freely on GitHub, NOAH empowers any IT department, engineer, or public organization to reconstruct a coherent, sustainable, and independent digital infrastructure.

“The freedom to use, modify, and share code is a prerequisite for any digital democracy.” — Eben Moglen


References

  1. Projet NOAH – GitHub
    https://github.com/Engelnicolas/NOAH
  2. Microsoft Licensing vs Open Source – Atonement Licensing
    https://atonementlicensing.com/microsoft-licensing-vs-open-source/
  3. Security Budget Benchmark Report – IANS Research, 2024
    https://www.iansresearch.com/resources/press-releases/detail/new-research-reveals-security-budgets-only-increased-2-points-in-2024–while-12–of-cisos-faced-reductions
  4. Cybercrime Cost Projections – Cybersecurity Ventures
    https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/
  5. Open Source Cost Benefits – eXo Platform
    https://www.exoplatform.com/blog/could-open-source-be-the-right-solution-to-cut-it-costs/
  6. Cybersecurity Statistics – Cobalt.io
    https://www.cobalt.io/blog/cybersecurity-statistics-2024

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