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Two thoughts: A) Consumer Windows PCs and laptops have been getting cheaper and cheaper. You can get a Windows laptop for $200 at any Walmart. That's $200 in
by tenebrisalietum 3y ago
Two thoughts:
A) Consumer Windows PCs and laptops have been getting cheaper and cheaper. You can get a Windows laptop for $200 at any Walmart. That's $200 in 2023 dollars versus for example $1000 for desktops in 1997 dollars. Microsoft's money off of Windows consumer licenses has to be declining.
B) Windows may be dying but Active Directory isn't, plus everything moving to cloud.
For the business side, it started with Microsoft's hosted email service - a subscription service many, many businesses saw value in using over hosting their own email. What's happening is the amount of things hostable is growing until Microsoft basically has Active Directory completely in the cloud. Then businesses can run with even less IT staff than they do now, but still have all the access control that Active Directory offers, even among non-Microsoft products that support SSO.