Word has it that Microsoft and the city of Moscow are about to part ways.

As Bloomberg reports, the Russian capital is planning to ditch Microsoft's software in favor of local offerings at the request of President Vladimir Putin, who wants to reduce the country's dependence on foreign technologies. To start, Moscow will replace Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook on 6,000 computers with an email system from Russia's New Cloud Technologies.

If all goes well, Moscow might expand the effort to as many as 600,000 computers and servers. And email isn't the only thing it's looking to replace. The city may also in the future nix Microsoft Windows and Office, the report notes.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.

"Putin is urging state entities and local companies to go domestic amid concerns over security and reliability after U.S. firms shut down paid services in Crimea following Russia's 2014 annexation," Bloomberg reports. As part of that effort, government entities next year will begin putting more pressure on state institutions that haven't switched to local solutions. Plus, the county may also soon raise taxes on US tech companies, if Putin's Internet czar German Klimenko has his way.

"We want the money of taxpayers and state-run firms to be primarily spent on local software," Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov recently told reporters, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Microsoft isn't the only US-based company Russia is giving the boot. Moscow's government has already swapped surveillance cameras and software from Cisco for local offerings, according to Bloomberg, while state media company Rossiya Segodnya and Moscow's regional government have dropped Oracle database systems.

Microsoft has faced similar pushback in China, where it created a special version of Windows 10 with beefed-up security and fewer consumer-specific apps and services. Back in 2014, China also ordered central state agencies not to use Windows 8, ostensibly to avoid end-of-service snafus that plagued those in the region following the demise of Windows XP.

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