When European organisations standardize on a company-wide AI workspace, the shortlist almost always narrows to four options: Langdock, ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and a self-hosted open-source interface such as Open WebUI (backed by vLLM, Ollama, or LiteLLM).
Each option solves “give employees a safe chat window.” They diverge sharply on vendor lock-in, European data residency, how permissions are enforced across connected systems, and how much engineering effort is required to run them.
Executive summary
- Langdock is the strongest fit for European mid-market and enterprise teams that want a turnkey, GDPR-focused, model-agnostic workspace (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Mistral, Gemini, Llama) with native OAuth permission mirroring across SharePoint, Confluence, Jira, and HubSpot, plus full MCP and Integrations API extensibility.
- ChatGPT Enterprise fits organisations committed specifically to OpenAI’s proprietary models and tooling, accepting single-model lock-in and US-parent cloud governance.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot fits enterprises whose workflows live almost entirely inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams—provided their SharePoint permission hygiene is already clean.
- Open WebUI + self-hosted inference fits organisations with strict on-premise sovereignty mandates or custom engineering teams that want zero per-seat SaaS licensing and full control over model weights and infrastructure.
Architectural comparison
| Criterion | Langdock | ChatGPT Enterprise | Microsoft 365 Copilot | Open WebUI (Self-Hosted) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model choice | Model-agnostic (OpenAI, Claude, Mistral, Gemini, Llama, custom endpoints) | OpenAI models only | Primarily OpenAI / Azure OpenAI | Any local (Ollama, vLLM) or API model via LiteLLM |
| Hosting & residency | EU cloud (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR) or dedicated/self-hosted enterprise deployment | OpenAI cloud (EU data residency option available) | Microsoft 365 tenant boundaries | 100% on your own Kubernetes or VPS infrastructure |
| Integration protocol support | Native OAuth connectors + inbound/outbound MCP + REST Integrations API | Connectors + custom GPT Actions | Microsoft Graph + Copilot Studio plugins | OpenAI-compatible APIs, Python pipelines, MCP via bridges |
| Source permission inheritance | 1:1 OAuth user-permission mirroring + SharePoint sensitivity label policies | Connector-dependent | Inherits Microsoft Graph permissions (exposes over-shared SharePoint files) | Custom engineering required for document-level RBAC |
| Target user adoption | Built for business & technical teams alike; guided assistants and prompt sharing | High familiarity for general knowledge workers | Embedded directly inside Office apps | Best for technical teams or organisations with internal AI platform support |
| Licensing model | Usage-aware workspace licensing without forced per-seat minimums across all tiers | High per-seat enterprise contract | Per-user monthly add-on on top of M365 licences | Open-source licence; you pay only for compute/GPUs and ops |
Where each platform wins—and where it breaks
1. Model independence vs single-vendor lock-in
In production, no single model provider wins every task: Anthropic’s Claude models frequently lead on code generation and complex document drafting, OpenAI models excel at general reasoning, and European or open-weight models (Mistral, Llama, Soofi S) are preferred for sensitive internal data classes.
- ChatGPT Enterprise and M365 Copilot tie your user layer and prompt assets to a single vendor ecosystem.
- Langdock decouples the workspace UI, assistants, and integrations from the underlying LLM—allowing admins to route specific assistants to EU-hosted Mistral or self-hosted endpoints while keeping frontier models available for approved use cases.
2. Integration depth beyond Microsoft 365
Microsoft Copilot is deeply integrated into Word, Excel, and Teams, but most companies run heterogeneous stacks: Atlassian Jira and Confluence for engineering, HubSpot or Salesforce for sales, Nextcloud or OpenProject for sovereign collaboration, and custom internal ERPs.
Langdock bridges heterogeneous stacks cleanly through its native OAuth connectors, its Integrations API and MCP support, and seamless handoffs to n8n workflow automation.
3. The SharePoint oversharing trap
A frequent surprise during Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts is that Copilot surfaces every document a user technically has read access to via historic SharePoint links—instantly exposing forgotten salary spreadsheets or draft M&A folders. Before enabling any enterprise search assistant, we recommend auditing IAM groups and configuring explicit sensitivity-label exclusions.
4. When to choose self-hosted Open WebUI (or combine both)
If your organisation processes classified R&D, healthcare, defense, or public-sector data that must never leave your own hardware, a self-hosted stack built on Open WebUI, LiteLLM, vLLM, and Keycloak SSO gives you complete physical and legal control.
Many enterprises run a hybrid architecture: Langdock as the governed, high-adoption workspace for business departments, connected via custom endpoints or MCP to self-hosted inference and internal RAG pipelines for sensitive domain data.
Decision checklist for technical leaders
- Need fast company-wide adoption across business departments, EU data protection, multi-model choice, and clean Jira/Confluence/SharePoint/HubSpot integration? Choose Langdock.
- Need 100% on-premise air-gapped or self-hosted open-source control with zero SaaS dependency? Choose Open WebUI + vLLM/Ollama on your own self-hosted AI platform.
- 95% of your target workflows are inside Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks? Pilot Microsoft 365 Copilot on a small cohort after tightening SharePoint permissions.
Evaluate and integrate your enterprise AI workspace
We help you compare Langdock, self-hosted Open WebUI, and hybrid architectures—and implement SSO, MCP servers, and core system integrations.
