6 ms·

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

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.

shitloadofbooks 9y ago
If you do enough volume with ANY vendor (AWS, GCP, Red Hat, Dell, Cisco) they'll offer you discounts.
- bonesss 9y ago
  My issue isn't the discounting, it's the discounting on things that require large addition investments to get working 'properly' in a modern context, and large ongoing investments into that same suppliers ecosystem. Office "needs" Sharepoint. Lots of Sharepoint and automation "needs" BizTalk. Neither of these are practically made to be customer managed, both require armies of external (MS partnered...), consultants. This implicit subscription to supplier monotheism undermines correct business decisions and creates economic impedence against correct business action. Sharecropping has never been a good fit for businesses who need to lead.
AceJohnny2 9y ago
> And if Microsoft is just discounting everything to get your business, that doesn't support the theory of Microsoft dominance. Microsoft has always discounted everything for volume licensing. That's how they lock you in.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  Hardly any enterprise software companies don’t discount for volume licensing. This is a standard business model, not some sinister Microsoft plot.
  - bonesss 9y ago
    In fairness: if management is choosing a Widget vendor, which offers volume licensing, then we're talking about a standard business model in many industries. If management is choosing a Document vendor, one of which is offering cheaper OS licensing in order to lock the purchaser into a treadmill of neverending consultant fees and half-baked integration work where the vendor will constantly push unrelated services and licensing to fix their own products because of walled gardens obscured by lacking technical and business competence on the part of the purchaser, we're talking MS. It's a highly successful strategy, but it undermines their customers and has left a sour taste in many a mouth. I don't know if Embrace, Extend, Extinguish counts as a "sinister plot"... I can't say I'm the most competent here to speak to what lies in the heart of "marketing" or "sales" people, much less at a giant like MS... I can say that the sellers I know would gleefully participate in sinister plots if it meant a better office and parking space.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  I'll summarize based on what Microsoft charges: 1. more than the competition - gouging! Those bastards! 2. same as the competition - collusion! Those bastards! 3. less than the competition - locking people in! Those bastards!
  - fwgwgwgch 9y ago
    Kinda like how Trump is viewed: I said he is standing up to China and somebody quoted him saying it's great Xi is president for life so that means Trump is not standing up to China. That bastard Trump talks to Taiwan president. That bastrd Trade tariffs: that bastard Top cancelled(bernies biggest point: that bastard
autokad 9y ago
the O365 argument reminds me of when people said blackberry would never go away
- jjeaff 9y ago
  I think the lock-in for blackberry was miniscule compared to office products. The feature set of blackberry wasn't even that extensive. On the other hand, there is no comparable suite of software that competes with Microsoft office on more than just the basics.
  - autokad 9y ago
    i think you forget how locked in people thought blackberry was.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
They discount it to sweeten the deal for your company's accounting department, who are almost always 100% suits who want what's familiar and have enough influence over the accounts to be able to get their way. But the reality is that for a 100% single-vendor, integrated system that works well with everything that's already installed in an SMB or larger, there are no competitors for O365. Back when I was doing SMB consulting gigs, I tried to steer a few folks away from it, because I think it's a bad long-term move to rely on too many services from a single vendor, and especially when those are all off-premises services that depend on a lot of working technology between you and the vendor. But, it became clear before long that I was giving bad advice. The clients that ignored me and went with O365 were happier, and when something went wrong, they just shrugged and said, "oh well, Microsoft will fix it soon." Whereas if something went wrong with any other system, it was my fault because I recommended it, even if I couldn't do anything about whatever particular piece was broken. Anyway, point is, every customer that signs up for O365 at any price is going to be a Microsoft customer for a very long time, and I don't see anybody on the horizon that is going to be changing anyone's mind about it.
- chii 9y ago
  Nobody got fired for choosing IBM. Still just as true as it was easy back when.
bri3d 9y ago
Is there real competition in the front-office / back-office "alternate devices" space? There are certainly niche players but at least at the $bigcos I've worked at, most "real" tasks aren't easily accomplished on a tablet, phone, or Chromebook. Web spreadsheets tend to be feature-incomplete, presentation and document creation is a mess, and that's not even starting in on the hundreds of proprietary front-office tools for appointment scheduling and client management and back-office tools for analytics and finance, which are strongly Windows-based. I've only seen a few people use tablets day-to-day and they're all mid-to-upper level execs whose jobs are far more delegation-and-communication oriented and who have the liberty of sending someone an email when they need "the numbers" pulled or a slide presentation whipped together. Even the BigCos I've worked at who use GSuite have had an additional subscription to Office365 for employees who need Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. I've seen very few larger companies who can subsist on Google Sheets alone. This could be something that changes in the next 5-10 years, certainly, but it's been a prophecy that's underdelivered for years. Kind of feels like the "year of Linux on the desktop" all over again.
- pavs 9y ago
  Airbus with 130,000 employees is moving to gsuite. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-picks-another-win-g-suite-airbus-grounds-microsoft-office/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-picks-another-win-g-sui...
  - Vulkum 9y ago
    Only in part. The part of Airbus that deals with confidential information [1] will stay on the Microsoft stack for a while (at least for e-mails). [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/sorry_microsoft_haters_airbus_isnt_killing_office_entirely/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/sorry_microsoft_hat...
    - pavs 9y ago
      I think it's fair to assume that moving so many users to a new platform (new to the users) - will take some time and getting used to. Email being one of the biggest pain points. If anything, such a large migration from software suite to another is most likely very rare. So probably begs the question why would a company do something like this if there isn't obvious benefit of doing this. Since I haven't used Microsoft products in a long time, I can't tell gsuite is vastly superior, other than very specialized edge cases for excel and word. For most people, it probably is more than good enough and not worth the extra money or (presumably) worse user experience.
zapita 9y ago
> It is yesteryear trying to desperately hang on to have relevance. What an incredibly misguided comment. Microsoft is a major player in the business software market, and there's no sign that will change anytime soon. Sure, Windows is not a growth center, but it's still a huge business and will continue to be for several years. Meanwhile Office 365 is adequately protecting their productivity business, and Azure is growing at an enormous rate. Most importantly, Microsoft has a massive home advantage when selling to businesses. They are the masters of cross-selling, and unlike consumer companies like Google, they know how to compete in markets without winner-takes-all outcomes (enterprise buyers, unlike consumers, know how to play vendors against each other to limit lock-in). As long as they deliver good enough products, it will be very hard to uproot them.
- wdr1 9y ago
  It is a major player, but in the same way that IBM is. What it is not is a Netflix, Amazon, Facebook or Google.
  - spiderPig 9y ago
    I would say Google is the new Microsoft of the 2000s now. From what I hear from friends, it’s very slow moving and filled with empire building leaders like Microsoft had. Amazon is really commendable in this aspect. Culture really does make a big difference no matter how smart your engineers are. I mean just look at how many chat/messenger products they have now. Gsuite may be lightweight now but it’s only a few years away from feature creep with PMs pushing their shit and making it a bloated mess.
- endorphone 9y ago
  >What an incredibly misguided comment. You strangely follow this by essentially supporting my comment. This whole conversation is a bit surreal, in a way, because we've been having it for literally a decade while Microsoft stagnates and becomes less and less important in this industry, a bit like IBM. The absolutely domination that Microsoft held in the late-90s to early-00s is something that is seems many in here are blissfully unaware. I remember desperately getting those technet early release discs to try to get a headstart on whatever Microsoft was doing next. Now...who cares? Like literally, Microsoft initiatives that are anything more than "yup, still selling that thing we got some entrenchment in a decade ago...and if we go outside of the lines even a bit it will spell doom" just fizzles. Remember when Exchange/MAPI integration was Microsoft's beachhead? BOOM. Then it was Office, but Microsoft had to rebuild Office to work on virtually every device or they would have had a mass exodus. Windows CE/Windows Mobile...all the Microsoft pull in the world was worth exactly nothing. Now, astonishingly few shops are actually making Windows apps. In-house development is overwhelmingly web apps, or even Android/iOS. People have mentioned contact management, scheduling, etc -- all overwhelmingly web and mobile apps, or at a minimum cross-platform. In the financial world the entire next generation of platforms are cross-platform or web-based. No one is pinning anything on Microsoft. I'm not anti-Microsoft by any measure -- I'm typing this on Windows 10 right now -- and the various fanboy "boooo, stop hating on M$" type replies are boorish. It's just a completely different world, and Microsoft is another IBM now.

shitloadofbooks 9y ago

If you do enough volume with ANY vendor (AWS, GCP, Red Hat, Dell, Cisco) they'll offer you discounts.

bonesss 9y ago
My issue isn't the discounting, it's the discounting on things that require large addition investments to get working 'properly' in a modern context, and large ongoing investments into that same suppliers ecosystem. Office "needs" Sharepoint. Lots of Sharepoint and automation "needs" BizTalk. Neither of these are practically made to be customer managed, both require armies of external (MS partnered...), consultants. This implicit subscription to supplier monotheism undermines correct business decisions and creates economic impedence against correct business action. Sharecropping has never been a good fit for businesses who need to lead.

AceJohnny2 9y ago

> And if Microsoft is just discounting everything to get your business, that doesn't support the theory of Microsoft dominance. Microsoft has always discounted everything for volume licensing. That's how they lock you in.

Analemma_ 9y ago
Hardly any enterprise software companies don’t discount for volume licensing. This is a standard business model, not some sinister Microsoft plot.
- bonesss 9y ago
  In fairness: if management is choosing a Widget vendor, which offers volume licensing, then we're talking about a standard business model in many industries. If management is choosing a Document vendor, one of which is offering cheaper OS licensing in order to lock the purchaser into a treadmill of neverending consultant fees and half-baked integration work where the vendor will constantly push unrelated services and licensing to fix their own products because of walled gardens obscured by lacking technical and business competence on the part of the purchaser, we're talking MS. It's a highly successful strategy, but it undermines their customers and has left a sour taste in many a mouth. I don't know if Embrace, Extend, Extinguish counts as a "sinister plot"... I can't say I'm the most competent here to speak to what lies in the heart of "marketing" or "sales" people, much less at a giant like MS... I can say that the sellers I know would gleefully participate in sinister plots if it meant a better office and parking space.
skookumchuck 9y ago
I'll summarize based on what Microsoft charges: 1. more than the competition - gouging! Those bastards! 2. same as the competition - collusion! Those bastards! 3. less than the competition - locking people in! Those bastards!
- fwgwgwgch 9y ago
  Kinda like how Trump is viewed: I said he is standing up to China and somebody quoted him saying it's great Xi is president for life so that means Trump is not standing up to China. That bastard Trump talks to Taiwan president. That bastrd Trade tariffs: that bastard Top cancelled(bernies biggest point: that bastard

autokad 9y ago

the O365 argument reminds me of when people said blackberry would never go away

jjeaff 9y ago
I think the lock-in for blackberry was miniscule compared to office products. The feature set of blackberry wasn't even that extensive. On the other hand, there is no comparable suite of software that competes with Microsoft office on more than just the basics.
- autokad 9y ago
  i think you forget how locked in people thought blackberry was.

thaumaturgy 9y ago

They discount it to sweeten the deal for your company's accounting department, who are almost always 100% suits who want what's familiar and have enough influence over the accounts to be able to get their way. But the reality is that for a 100% single-vendor, integrated system that works well with everything that's already installed in an SMB or larger, there are no competitors for O365. Back when I was doing SMB consulting gigs, I tried to steer a few folks away from it, because I think it's a bad long-term move to rely on too many services from a single vendor, and especially when those are all off-premises services that depend on a lot of working technology between you and the vendor. But, it became clear before long that I was giving bad advice. The clients that ignored me and went with O365 were happier, and when something went wrong, they just shrugged and said, "oh well, Microsoft will fix it soon." Whereas if something went wrong with any other system, it was my fault because I recommended it, even if I couldn't do anything about whatever particular piece was broken. Anyway, point is, every customer that signs up for O365 at any price is going to be a Microsoft customer for a very long time, and I don't see anybody on the horizon that is going to be changing anyone's mind about it.

chii 9y ago
Nobody got fired for choosing IBM. Still just as true as it was easy back when.

bri3d 9y ago

Is there real competition in the front-office / back-office "alternate devices" space? There are certainly niche players but at least at the $bigcos I've worked at, most "real" tasks aren't easily accomplished on a tablet, phone, or Chromebook. Web spreadsheets tend to be feature-incomplete, presentation and document creation is a mess, and that's not even starting in on the hundreds of proprietary front-office tools for appointment scheduling and client management and back-office tools for analytics and finance, which are strongly Windows-based. I've only seen a few people use tablets day-to-day and they're all mid-to-upper level execs whose jobs are far more delegation-and-communication oriented and who have the liberty of sending someone an email when they need "the numbers" pulled or a slide presentation whipped together. Even the BigCos I've worked at who use GSuite have had an additional subscription to Office365 for employees who need Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. I've seen very few larger companies who can subsist on Google Sheets alone. This could be something that changes in the next 5-10 years, certainly, but it's been a prophecy that's underdelivered for years. Kind of feels like the "year of Linux on the desktop" all over again.

pavs 9y ago
Airbus with 130,000 employees is moving to gsuite. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-picks-another-win-g-suite-airbus-grounds-microsoft-office/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-picks-another-win-g-sui...
- Vulkum 9y ago
  Only in part. The part of Airbus that deals with confidential information [1] will stay on the Microsoft stack for a while (at least for e-mails). [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/sorry_microsoft_haters_airbus_isnt_killing_office_entirely/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/sorry_microsoft_hat...
  - pavs 9y ago
    I think it's fair to assume that moving so many users to a new platform (new to the users) - will take some time and getting used to. Email being one of the biggest pain points. If anything, such a large migration from software suite to another is most likely very rare. So probably begs the question why would a company do something like this if there isn't obvious benefit of doing this. Since I haven't used Microsoft products in a long time, I can't tell gsuite is vastly superior, other than very specialized edge cases for excel and word. For most people, it probably is more than good enough and not worth the extra money or (presumably) worse user experience.

zapita 9y ago

> It is yesteryear trying to desperately hang on to have relevance. What an incredibly misguided comment. Microsoft is a major player in the business software market, and there's no sign that will change anytime soon. Sure, Windows is not a growth center, but it's still a huge business and will continue to be for several years. Meanwhile Office 365 is adequately protecting their productivity business, and Azure is growing at an enormous rate. Most importantly, Microsoft has a massive home advantage when selling to businesses. They are the masters of cross-selling, and unlike consumer companies like Google, they know how to compete in markets without winner-takes-all outcomes (enterprise buyers, unlike consumers, know how to play vendors against each other to limit lock-in). As long as they deliver good enough products, it will be very hard to uproot them.

wdr1 9y ago
It is a major player, but in the same way that IBM is. What it is not is a Netflix, Amazon, Facebook or Google.
- spiderPig 9y ago
  I would say Google is the new Microsoft of the 2000s now. From what I hear from friends, it’s very slow moving and filled with empire building leaders like Microsoft had. Amazon is really commendable in this aspect. Culture really does make a big difference no matter how smart your engineers are. I mean just look at how many chat/messenger products they have now. Gsuite may be lightweight now but it’s only a few years away from feature creep with PMs pushing their shit and making it a bloated mess.
endorphone 9y ago
>What an incredibly misguided comment. You strangely follow this by essentially supporting my comment. This whole conversation is a bit surreal, in a way, because we've been having it for literally a decade while Microsoft stagnates and becomes less and less important in this industry, a bit like IBM. The absolutely domination that Microsoft held in the late-90s to early-00s is something that is seems many in here are blissfully unaware. I remember desperately getting those technet early release discs to try to get a headstart on whatever Microsoft was doing next. Now...who cares? Like literally, Microsoft initiatives that are anything more than "yup, still selling that thing we got some entrenchment in a decade ago...and if we go outside of the lines even a bit it will spell doom" just fizzles. Remember when Exchange/MAPI integration was Microsoft's beachhead? BOOM. Then it was Office, but Microsoft had to rebuild Office to work on virtually every device or they would have had a mass exodus. Windows CE/Windows Mobile...all the Microsoft pull in the world was worth exactly nothing. Now, astonishingly few shops are actually making Windows apps. In-house development is overwhelmingly web apps, or even Android/iOS. People have mentioned contact management, scheduling, etc -- all overwhelmingly web and mobile apps, or at a minimum cross-platform. In the financial world the entire next generation of platforms are cross-platform or web-based. No one is pinning anything on Microsoft. I'm not anti-Microsoft by any measure -- I'm typing this on Windows 10 right now -- and the various fanboy "boooo, stop hating on M$" type replies are boorish. It's just a completely different world, and Microsoft is another IBM now.