Six Months to 12 January 2027 – How the EU Data Act Rewrites the Microsoft 365 Exit Math for German SMEs and Public-Sector Bodies

On 12 January 2027 a chapter of cloud marketing that has effectively prevented provider switching for years comes to a close in the EU. From that date, Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 – the EU Data Act – bans all egress and switching fees for data-processing services. This applies to Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Oracle Cloud – to every provider serving EU customers.

For German SME IT leaders, school authorities and public bodies who are already considering leaving Microsoft 365 on data-protection grounds, this date changes the math. Until now, data export, interim costs for parallel operation and additional fees for compliance exports were hard migration costs. From the cut-off, these line items disappear entirely. Anyone planning with six months' lead time has a clean switching moment on 12 January 2027.

This post explains the Data Act, describes the concrete clauses for SaaS switching, weighs the economic effect against the Microsoft price increase of 1 July 2026 and delivers a six-month checklist in the HowTo section to use 12 January 2027 operationally.

What the EU Data Act is – and what it does to cloud contracts

The EU Data Act was enacted as Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 and became fully applicable on 12 September 2025. Chapter VI of the regulation – Articles 23 to 31 – specifically governs switching between providers of data-processing services. The legislator's reasoning is stated explicitly in Recital 79: economic and technical lock-in effects should be dismantled because they hamper European competitiveness and undermine digital sovereignty.

The three central obligations for cloud providers:

• Article 23 – Right to switch. Customers have an inalienable right to switch providers, take their data and exportable digital assets with them, and reach functional equivalence at the new provider.
• Article 24 – Notice periods and contract clauses. The maximum notice period is two months. Clauses that violate this are partly void – including in already-running contracts.
• Article 25 – Switching and egress fees. Until 12 January 2027 only at the level of direct, transparently documented cost. From 12 January 2027 entirely prohibited.

A common misunderstanding at the outset: the Data Act is not limited to infrastructure (IaaS). Article 2(8) defines data-processing services broadly – Software-as-a-Service is expressly included. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, HubSpot: all are subject to the switching regime.

What Microsoft already promised in 2024 – and what the Data Act makes of it

On 13 March 2024 Microsoft announced that customers leaving the Azure platform entirely would no longer pay egress fees. AWS and Google Cloud followed in the same week. The trigger was foreseeable: the Data Act was already in the Official Journal, and competition authorities in Berlin, Paris and Rome had signalled investigations for abuse of dominance.

In practice, the concessions remained narrow:

• Azure waives the egress fee only when all subscriptions are cancelled simultaneously. Partial migrations remain charged.
• AWS explicitly excludes certain services – CloudFront, Direct Connect and cross-region transfers between AWS accounts.
• Google Cloud refunds the fee retroactively against proof – a bureaucratic process many SMEs never complete.

The Data Act turns these selective concessions into a hard, unconditional legal obligation from 12 January 2027. Also for partial migrations, also for individual mailboxes, also without bureaucratic refund applications, also for SaaS-specific data types. The compliance frame will sit at the Bundeskartellamt, which has already classified Microsoft under § 19a GWB as an undertaking of paramount cross-market significance since 2023.

Why 12 January 2027 is the economically best switching date

Anyone working through the migration cost between a switch in September 2026 and a switch in January 2027 today runs into three items that change on the cut-off:

• Egress fees. A SharePoint volume of 8 TB currently costs around 380 euros to export from Azure. From 12 January 2027 – zero.
• Compliance exports. Teams chat history export via the eDiscovery API is currently a paid extra – around 0.20 euros per mailbox per export. At 2,000 users that is 400 euros. From the cut-off – zero.
• Contractual exit clauses. Enterprise Agreement contracts with remaining term include penalty clauses for early termination. Those clauses collide with Article 24 Data Act from 12 January 2027 and become partly void.

Combined with the Microsoft price increase of 1 July 2026 – public sector up to plus 13 percent, business tariffs up to plus 16 percent – switching in January 2027 costs a typical body with 1,000 users roughly 18,000 to 26,000 euros less than switching in September 2026. The context for that pricing calculation is set out in the post Three months after the Hanover halt, which quantifies the price-increase effects in the education sector.

What the Data Act does not regulate – the three remaining gaps

The Data Act is a contract law, not a data-protection law and not a security law. Three areas are expressly untouched:

• Access under CLOUD Act, FISA 702 and Executive Order 12333. The US authority access exposure to data held with US providers is not changed by the Data Act. Anyone who would have exited under Article 44 GDPR still has to exit. The CLOUD Act post covers the 2026 access position including the most recent FISA Court interpretation.
• Functional equivalence for SaaS. Article 30 requires functional equivalence only for IaaS. For SaaS the weaker standard "exportable data in a common format" applies. That was the compromise between European and US providers during negotiations – and it is a real loss in day-to-day switching.
• Compliance metadata. Retention policies, DLP rules, sensitivity labels, eDiscovery cases: none of these compliance artefacts fall under the export obligation. Anyone who wants them back at the target has to rebuild them.

The three gaps are the subject of a Commission evaluation, whose interim report of 17 June 2026 proposes a fix for the second Data Act amendment in 2028. Until then they must be planned around.

What IT leaders should decide now

The Data Act is not a demand to switch – it is an enabler. For IT leaders who are already considering a switch on data-protection, economic or strategic grounds, it moves the favourable migration window opening to 12 January 2027. The three central decisions by end of September 2026:

• Finish contract inventory. By end of August 2026 build the internal contract matrix. Without this basis no defensible switching plan is possible. The post on NIS2 and the Microsoft paradox shows why the contract inventory is required for NIS2 compliance in any case.
• Fix target architecture. By mid September 2026 name the European target architecture. For public authorities openDesk is the obvious candidate, for SMEs a combination of Nextcloud, Element and Collabora. The full alternatives matrix is under /en/alternativen.
• Set the calendar. By end of September 2026 lay out the concrete six-month calendar, with training blocks, test phase, parallel phase and cut-over on 12 January 2027. For an initial assessment of your own calendar, the entry point is /en/contact. The operational line items for managed operation of a European environment are under /en/pricing.

Conclusion

The EU Data Act turns the hyperscalers' voluntary concession into an unconditional legal obligation on 12 January 2027. For German SMEs, school authorities and public bodies looking to exit Microsoft 365, it opens the economically most favourable switching window since the dawn of the cloud era. The combination of removed egress fees, shortened notice periods, partly void exit clauses and the Microsoft price increase of 1 July 2026 shifts the switching break-even several months earlier. Six months are a realistic preparation time. The ten steps in the HowTo section are the operational roadmap for it.