"Microsoft makes an endless quantity of software that is alluring to big businesses, like Office, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, etc..." Let me offer some p

"Microsoft makes an endless quantity of software that is alluring to big businesses, like Office, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, etc..." Let me offer some perspective on this. I worked for a number of years as a programmer at a large (read: "enterprise-scale") entity. Being in closer physical proximity to the general workforce than our IT department, I was often the go-to guy when employees needed tech support. And one thing I learned is that Microsoft's overcomplicated software saps countless hours of productivity from organizations. I shudder to imagine the salary dollars that go to waste every day as people search for a certain button in the Outlook interface, fiddle with Word's quirky indentation logic, try to set up mail forwarding in Exchange, and panic over the "lost" (actually hidden) rows in their Excel workbooks. If I were running a BigCo, I'd avoid exposing my regular employees to MS products. If my DBAs wanted to use SQL Server, ok, no problem. When it comes to software that is purely internal to the tech department, I'd trust their decision. But if I would never force my marketing department to do all their mail and calendaring with Outlook, unless of course I were willing to accept the inevitable productivity hit.