My day job is at a massive institution. We recently went all-in on O365. The odds of us ever leaving this platform are slim-to-none. Microsoft has really hit a powerful long-term business model.
The key is tying these services to discounts on Windows licensing. We're buying them anyway so no matter what Google offers us they can't beat the cost savings Microsoft can provide. Same with AWS vs Azure — we can use our volume licensing in the cloud with Azure where with other providers we'd have to pay through the nose.
Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo. And I think that disruption will take quite a while.
Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo.
Windows is under enormous threat, and much of our computing now takes place on alternate devices. The example of O365 is the perfect example, that platform being equally usable across many platforms (because it had to to have any market influence).
And if Microsoft is just discounting everything to get your business, that doesn't support the theory of Microsoft dominance. It is yesteryear trying to desperately hang on to have relevance. That is not an example of why Microsoft is a 1T company, but is an example of why the future doesn't look so hot.
I know an organization that switched to Office365 some time ago— from Google Entreprise / G suite:
Some people do use Google tools on the side, using personal accounts for collaborating on documents (presentations, docs). They don’t necessarily know the organization was using them before, it’s like they’re bringing them inside as a new tool.
Many exchange many MS Office words via e-mail (using desktop email clients).
People use WeTransfer for sharing files internally or with contractors.
People used to use Google Drive for sharing static files and it seems that this shared drive usage stopped and that people are not using OneDrive, relying on email and wetransfer.
(I would not be surprised if some team Slack exist somewhere or I’m pretty sure many use their Facebook messengers to send quick links and references)
As far as I know, the only consistently used Office365 tools are Mail and Calendar.
Office365 doesn’t seem to induce the same collaborative patterns that Google Drive induce at all.
Mostly it feels communication and collaboration are like 10 years or more ago:
email is king, versioning is absent, and people use external tools when they feel it’s quicker and better (at odd with the organization policies of course)
PS: I’ll add that all of my students are used to Google Drive tools, using Docs and Presentations regularly. It grew progressively over the year, and now it’s very rare to encounter a student who never used Google Drive.
I teach to 150+ students each year, so I’d say it’s representative of a new wave of professionals who take real-time collaborative tools for granted (and will be sorely disappointed by tools and process in the organizations they’re about to join)
At the massive institution I work at, we recently went all-in on O365 18 months ago and are now switching to Google (over the next 12 months). So perhaps, but the room for change seems to be evident.
Companies have so much fear when it comes to email. We've been on Rackspace Hosted Exchange for almost a decade. The plan is to move to O365 this year. And to get it directly from Microsoft, and roll our Office licenses into it.
We get Office + email for just a hair more than we pay now, and we don't have to deal with the dinks at Rackspace when we have issues with it. I'm sure Microsoft support isn't perfect, but why go through a middleman.
> The key is tying these services to discounts on Windows licensing
Like Microsoft 365, which is a superset of Office 365, and includes Windows licensing for desktops, along with the other "nice to haves" from the Azure AD premium suite, like Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, and the Enterprise Mobility suite stuff. Oh, and an OMA DM compliant MDM suite with DLP and ...
I work in this space, and it seems like the "365" suite is rapidly becoming an incredibly well integrated kitchen-sink approach to end-users software & devices.
AWS should partner with Apple (like all their other enterprise partnerships) to hawk iOS and Mac devices as a complete solution. Although it would only really work if AWS goes further up the stack from IaaS.
I just noticed that One Drive includes 1 TB of cloud storage -- compare that to the 30 GB we get with Google's business suite. No wonder all our employees also have a separate Dropbox subscription. That's a cost savings to get something like lots of cloud storage in addition to office applications -- it's more of a Dropbox + Google replacement. I wonder if in practice it is as nice as Dropbox + Google.
> Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo.
Microsoft is its own worst enemy - Windows usability has been going down the drain in recent years (is it possible that the desktop has been neglected due to the new emphasize on enterprise and the cloud?), and people get used to alternative OS's via Android.
The looming threat to Windows is the post-"PC" device space. The mobile Office offerings on iOS definitely leave much to be desired, and there's an opening for a "mobile-first" approach to data that extends to the future of human-computer interfaces
I also work for a massive institution with around 50,000 employees, a large portion of whom are Windows users. It was just announced within the last couple of months that we will be switching from Microsoft Office to Google. It seems like a massive undertaking to me and I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning behind it, but it is safe to say cost is front and center.
You make an excellent point wrt discounts. We are often puzzled by unsound technical choices that make little sense until you realize the decision is not an isolated event.
Everything makes sense. If it doesn't, it's because you are missing something.
Just like most stocks did. One of my pet peeves in articles like this and the Facebook one on the front page that assume every single change in a company's stock is a direct result of something a company did that week. Pretty useless when they don't take into account what the market in general is doing.
That's financial news every day. They make up nonsense to associate with stock/market movements. Last week, it was FB being down because of issues. Nevermind the entire market was down. And if the dow is down .05% for the day, they'll make up something to state the reason for it.
Everyday on bloomberg, cnbc, etc, they said "the dow or some stock" is down for X reason but that's nonsense. If the talking heads at bloomberg, cnbc, etc knew the reasons for daily stock/market moves, then they wouldn't be working as journalists. They'd be making bank on wall street.
On a somewhat unrelated note, does anybody else despise the new Techcrunch design? I scrolled below the article for a second, then back up, and somehow I was no longer on the MS article, but rather watching a Fitbit Versa review.
What Microsoft needs to do is make UWP APIs on par with Win32 APIs. Also, the reason why so many companies wrote custom apps for windows was because of VB. They need to make it so that you can write code and compile it to a single executable without the framework tacked on that is as easy and powerful as VB was. This will get them back in the game and push them over the 1 trillion hump.
Mainly because of their cloud business, which I feel is a fair evaluation.
Azure is widening the gap between 2nd and 3rd place in cloud hosting, while also making huge gains in cloud services, which is something AWS doesn't have.
Question: has Microsoft ever been second to the product party by more than 3 years, and won? What about on sever and tools?
Bing, windowsphone, Zune, ie, are all end-user facing failures—none of which were based initially on in-house innovation.
My concern is with Azure, and I want to believe 1) that cloud is not winner take all and 2) that microsoft won’t fatally trip over itself as it tries to learn what the market wants.
Please help me with fodder to form my own opinion on whether Azure can ever be more than a bundled tie-in (Azure sales ~= Azure utilization) like our old friend Sharepoint.
Back when I was still a cool kid, the biggest worry for a lot of companies was Microsoft deciding to enter your space. Bottomless war chest, an army of programmers and a finely tuned sales channel meant that all their new initiatives started at +20 points.
SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc. If they didn't have it, they bought a company that did have it - and then used their 800lbs of brute market muscle to make it into the dominant offering.
MS should make windows free and just charge for services. I’d love it if they made SQLServer free (sans support or add paid support that actually is good not outsourced) too but that’s a pipe dream.
Windows is pretty much already free if you are not a business. Just download Windows10 ISO from MS and install it on your home PC.
You will not be prompt to activate it and it will not ever lock itself. Only thing you cannot do is change your "Personalisation Settings" e.g. remove stupid "recomendations" on your Start, change desktop background etc.. Also you will have small overlay on bottom left corner saying "Windows is not activated" or smth.
The bigger question in my mind is whether MSFT will reach a $1T market cap because it is essentially behaving like a banker and moving money around, or whether it will genuinely innovate to expand its revenue.
If it is the former they are vulnerable to their souffle collapsing.
The typical hypey techcrunch headline belies the fact that MSFT is reapproaching where it was two weeks ago in the markets.
Is there any chance Microsoft will take a strong stance on privacy like Apple? They seem to have strong business models besides ads so they can avoid becoming a data grubbing pile of crap.
They sued the government to keep from handing over customer data stored overseas. Isn't that a pretty strong stance on privacy?
They could certainly strengthen their stance in some areas, though, such as by including Bitlocker in all versions of Windows and using strong E2E encryption in Skypep. But I'm not sure that the majority of people would use Bitlocker anyway.
I am using a lot of open source (e.g. Linux) and if I have the choice I mostly don't use Microsoft software. Nevertheless, I don't really care if Microsoft will sunset at some point in the future.
In fact, I care about being able to keep my data private and be able to use my services independently. As long as that is possible I am okay with Microsoft/Google/Amazon selling others their golden cloud services. It is more a live and let live attitude.
Agreed. But it’s every major player in tech. I wish the political desire to regulate markets existed. We have these huge corporations, and few else. They just don’t employ enough people, and their products leave people wanting.
As far as seeing anyone sunset, I don’t. But I do hope to see the end to homelessness and needless brutalism.
[+] [-] tammer|8 years ago|reply
The key is tying these services to discounts on Windows licensing. We're buying them anyway so no matter what Google offers us they can't beat the cost savings Microsoft can provide. Same with AWS vs Azure — we can use our volume licensing in the cloud with Azure where with other providers we'd have to pay through the nose.
Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo. And I think that disruption will take quite a while.
[+] [-] endorphone|8 years ago|reply
Windows is under enormous threat, and much of our computing now takes place on alternate devices. The example of O365 is the perfect example, that platform being equally usable across many platforms (because it had to to have any market influence).
And if Microsoft is just discounting everything to get your business, that doesn't support the theory of Microsoft dominance. It is yesteryear trying to desperately hang on to have relevance. That is not an example of why Microsoft is a 1T company, but is an example of why the future doesn't look so hot.
[+] [-] juliendorra|8 years ago|reply
Some people do use Google tools on the side, using personal accounts for collaborating on documents (presentations, docs). They don’t necessarily know the organization was using them before, it’s like they’re bringing them inside as a new tool.
Many exchange many MS Office words via e-mail (using desktop email clients).
People use WeTransfer for sharing files internally or with contractors.
People used to use Google Drive for sharing static files and it seems that this shared drive usage stopped and that people are not using OneDrive, relying on email and wetransfer.
(I would not be surprised if some team Slack exist somewhere or I’m pretty sure many use their Facebook messengers to send quick links and references)
As far as I know, the only consistently used Office365 tools are Mail and Calendar.
Office365 doesn’t seem to induce the same collaborative patterns that Google Drive induce at all.
Mostly it feels communication and collaboration are like 10 years or more ago:
email is king, versioning is absent, and people use external tools when they feel it’s quicker and better (at odd with the organization policies of course)
PS: I’ll add that all of my students are used to Google Drive tools, using Docs and Presentations regularly. It grew progressively over the year, and now it’s very rare to encounter a student who never used Google Drive.
I teach to 150+ students each year, so I’d say it’s representative of a new wave of professionals who take real-time collaborative tools for granted (and will be sorely disappointed by tools and process in the organizations they’re about to join)
[+] [-] citilife|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|8 years ago|reply
We get Office + email for just a hair more than we pay now, and we don't have to deal with the dinks at Rackspace when we have issues with it. I'm sure Microsoft support isn't perfect, but why go through a middleman.
[+] [-] hug|8 years ago|reply
Like Microsoft 365, which is a superset of Office 365, and includes Windows licensing for desktops, along with the other "nice to haves" from the Azure AD premium suite, like Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, and the Enterprise Mobility suite stuff. Oh, and an OMA DM compliant MDM suite with DLP and ...
I work in this space, and it seems like the "365" suite is rapidly becoming an incredibly well integrated kitchen-sink approach to end-users software & devices.
[+] [-] IBM|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellofunk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|8 years ago|reply
Microsoft is its own worst enemy - Windows usability has been going down the drain in recent years (is it possible that the desktop has been neglected due to the new emphasize on enterprise and the cloud?), and people get used to alternative OS's via Android.
[+] [-] sheetjs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] acdanger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|8 years ago|reply
Everything makes sense. If it doesn't, it's because you are missing something.
[+] [-] justonepost|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FigmentEngine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joseakle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comportboy|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nly|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anothergoogler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zombieprocesses|8 years ago|reply
Everyday on bloomberg, cnbc, etc, they said "the dow or some stock" is down for X reason but that's nonsense. If the talking heads at bloomberg, cnbc, etc knew the reasons for daily stock/market moves, then they wouldn't be working as journalists. They'd be making bank on wall street.
[+] [-] downandout|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mastazi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexwebb2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirjaz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxy|8 years ago|reply
Azure is widening the gap between 2nd and 3rd place in cloud hosting, while also making huge gains in cloud services, which is something AWS doesn't have.
[+] [-] mistermann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway84742|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxschumacher|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didip|8 years ago|reply
I think whoever boosted their cloud offerings (in terms of market share) the next few years, will reach $1T market cap first.
And it’s well within reasons for all major cloud vendors to reach $1T in a couple years.
[+] [-] CrazyCatDog|8 years ago|reply
Bing, windowsphone, Zune, ie, are all end-user facing failures—none of which were based initially on in-house innovation.
My concern is with Azure, and I want to believe 1) that cloud is not winner take all and 2) that microsoft won’t fatally trip over itself as it tries to learn what the market wants.
Please help me with fodder to form my own opinion on whether Azure can ever be more than a bundled tie-in (Azure sales ~= Azure utilization) like our old friend Sharepoint.
[+] [-] nikanj|8 years ago|reply
SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc. If they didn't have it, they bought a company that did have it - and then used their 800lbs of brute market muscle to make it into the dominant offering.
[+] [-] PeterStuer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] millstone|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lev99|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gigatexal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romanovcode|8 years ago|reply
You will not be prompt to activate it and it will not ever lock itself. Only thing you cannot do is change your "Personalisation Settings" e.g. remove stupid "recomendations" on your Start, change desktop background etc.. Also you will have small overlay on bottom left corner saying "Windows is not activated" or smth.
[+] [-] tcarn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olavgg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olivermarks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomnipotent|8 years ago|reply
Modern GAAP makes this impossible to hide thanks to Enron (shuffling cash between subsidiaries).
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] singhrac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mel919|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|8 years ago|reply
They could certainly strengthen their stance in some areas, though, such as by including Bitlocker in all versions of Windows and using strong E2E encryption in Skypep. But I'm not sure that the majority of people would use Bitlocker anyway.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spiderPig|8 years ago|reply
That being said, It's scary how big these MegaCorps have gotten.
[+] [-] pmarreck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JepZ|8 years ago|reply
In fact, I care about being able to keep my data private and be able to use my services independently. As long as that is possible I am okay with Microsoft/Google/Amazon selling others their golden cloud services. It is more a live and let live attitude.
[+] [-] ianai|8 years ago|reply
As far as seeing anyone sunset, I don’t. But I do hope to see the end to homelessness and needless brutalism.