There are absolutely large orgs in the Google and Apple ecosystems.
My org, for example, doesn’t use Microsoft except for a smattering of Excel and Word subscriptions to deal with some customer documents that aren’t handled well by Google Docs and Google Sheets.
Yeah, anyone who uses Excel on a professional level can tell you Google sheets etc are NO substitute for Excel. Just so many things the competitors just can’t do
For financials, only the companies still in the dark ages depend on Excel rather than real ERP or accounting software.
Sheets handles pretty much all typical business needs, but we do run into issues if we’re collaborating with another company that is using macros or something in Excel.
I work for a company that does 10s of billions in revenue, and the finance departments all use excel as well. Pretty much every giant corporations finance departments use excel.
Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.
There’s a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I’m not a professional. So they’d have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to “let’s not change anything”.
So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.
The same goes for Google Workspace. Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS) would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It’s cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don’t work as desired. These people just don’t see it as a priority. Don’t understand the dangers.
LibreOffice is not a replacement for M365 though, it’s a replacement for Office. M365 is not just office.
LibreOffice doesn’t give every user 1TB of cloud storage space. It doesn’t give you a company email address and management tools for users. It doesn’t give you 95% of what M365 does.
MSFT will continue to enshittify, people who point out this will happen will be poo-poo’d because switching would be complicated and costly…
… But, having to panic switch sometime down the road, because an entire class of software features or pricing models drastically alter with little warning…
… Well then, in the long run, it would have been less costly to start the migration strategy earlier.
I have seen this play out at every single company or non profit I have ever worked at, and I have learned to leave about 6 months after a planned migration/mitigation strategy gets canned as too costly and unnecessary… because usually, 6 months or so after that, every one is now in panic mode, and my workload would triple.
Including literally at MSFT itself.
The managers and corporate don’t know anything other than maximize short term profits, and have astounding levels of normalcy bias; even if you can present a well resesrched, realistic scenario with detailed costs over time for different strategies… they basically always assume things will just be fine, untill its far too late.
Yet again, I laugh, and remark ‘People still use Windows? People still use MSFT products?’
There’s really no competitor for large orgs with robust technology needs.
There are absolutely large orgs in the Google and Apple ecosystems. My org, for example, doesn’t use Microsoft except for a smattering of Excel and Word subscriptions to deal with some customer documents that aren’t handled well by Google Docs and Google Sheets.
The article clearly states that this non-profit moved from Google to Microsoft after Google started charging lol
Yeah, anyone who uses Excel on a professional level can tell you Google sheets etc are NO substitute for Excel. Just so many things the competitors just can’t do
For financials, only the companies still in the dark ages depend on Excel rather than real ERP or accounting software.
Sheets handles pretty much all typical business needs, but we do run into issues if we’re collaborating with another company that is using macros or something in Excel.
I work for a company that does 10s of billions in revenue, and the finance departments all use excel as well. Pretty much every giant corporations finance departments use excel.
What about libreoffice? What are the things you can only achieve with MS Excel?
Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.
There’s a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I’m not a professional. So they’d have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to “let’s not change anything”.
So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.
The same goes for Google Workspace. Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS) would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It’s cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don’t work as desired. These people just don’t see it as a priority. Don’t understand the dangers.
LibreOffice is not a replacement for M365 though, it’s a replacement for Office. M365 is not just office.
LibreOffice doesn’t give every user 1TB of cloud storage space. It doesn’t give you a company email address and management tools for users. It doesn’t give you 95% of what M365 does.
Yep.
MSFT will continue to enshittify, people who point out this will happen will be poo-poo’d because switching would be complicated and costly…
… But, having to panic switch sometime down the road, because an entire class of software features or pricing models drastically alter with little warning…
… Well then, in the long run, it would have been less costly to start the migration strategy earlier.
I have seen this play out at every single company or non profit I have ever worked at, and I have learned to leave about 6 months after a planned migration/mitigation strategy gets canned as too costly and unnecessary… because usually, 6 months or so after that, every one is now in panic mode, and my workload would triple.
Including literally at MSFT itself.
The managers and corporate don’t know anything other than maximize short term profits, and have astounding levels of normalcy bias; even if you can present a well resesrched, realistic scenario with detailed costs over time for different strategies… they basically always assume things will just be fine, untill its far too late.
Was gonna say this is exactly why Chromebooks and Google docs is popular.
Especially when you can use literally any other word process and program and save in Microsoft document formats.