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Office is very much not a problem. LibreOffice has UI plugins that arrange everything in a standard Office pre-365 layout. I've been using it for years and I ca

by 3RTB297 28d ago

Office is very much not a problem. LibreOffice has UI plugins that arrange everything in a standard Office pre-365 layout. I've been using it for years and I can't recall a single time I've ran into any issues. I think Excel macros are where the start of dealbreakers begin, which is a niche issue. 90+% of Office users won't hit that wall. Second, the EU has been pouring money into an OpenOffice fork for official use and replacement of Office 365 for a while. https://office.eu/ https://office.eu/

alkonaut 28d ago
The 10% excel sheets are exactly the problem. You can replace 90% or even 99% with either some online simpler office suite or none at all. But it will turn out there are business critical things running in 2003 format excel sheets with macros and if anything stops working then the organization stops working. The person who made these sheets and macros has retired 20 years ago and "updating it" would require making a dozen little applications to replace them which would be a huge task. The simple/cheap answer I think is to just keep the power users and legacy systems on the tools they need/want. Because that's where the pain point is that cause these projects to fail. If you aim for 100% you'll end up with 0% eventually. If you aim for 90%, you can do it. But Microsoft know this, and would make sure that a 90% migration saves you much less than a 100% migration. Which is why this is so rare still. (I think the number is probably 99% not 90%, but the point is the same)
- robocat 27d ago
  How many people in most government positions are using Excel? SaaS and mobile has taken over many apps. We sell SaaS to business and govt clients where most end users are either on a browser or a mobile app. There is a Windows application (path dependent history) but it is almost vestigial for configuration/management.
  - alkonaut 24d ago
    of people with a laptop? Maybe half (Just a guess). But most of those are not using it for anything complex. But it doesn't matter, it's that 1% of excel users and their sheet that is the problem. You'll find where it is WHEN you try to phase out excel. Not before. The report will be "I can no longer run our weekly report thing because google sheets/liberoffice doesn't run the macro and now we can't update the schedule for the drivers and they're angry, please advise". The solution, invariably, is not to throw a contractor at the problem and write a web service for it. It's to just let that sheet keep working another decade and pay the excel license. It's much much cheaper. But it also means that the long tail of Excel stays.
red_admiral 27d ago
This is a great replacement for Office Online and Onedrive, but will it work as a standalone desktop application that stores files to by home directory?

by 3RTB297 28d ago

alkonaut 28d ago

The 10% excel sheets are exactly the problem. You can replace 90% or even 99% with either some online simpler office suite or none at all. But it will turn out there are business critical things running in 2003 format excel sheets with macros and if anything stops working then the organization stops working. The person who made these sheets and macros has retired 20 years ago and "updating it" would require making a dozen little applications to replace them which would be a huge task. The simple/cheap answer I think is to just keep the power users and legacy systems on the tools they need/want. Because that's where the pain point is that cause these projects to fail. If you aim for 100% you'll end up with 0% eventually. If you aim for 90%, you can do it. But Microsoft know this, and would make sure that a 90% migration saves you much less than a 100% migration. Which is why this is so rare still. (I think the number is probably 99% not 90%, but the point is the same)

robocat 27d ago
How many people in most government positions are using Excel? SaaS and mobile has taken over many apps. We sell SaaS to business and govt clients where most end users are either on a browser or a mobile app. There is a Windows application (path dependent history) but it is almost vestigial for configuration/management.
- alkonaut 24d ago
  of people with a laptop? Maybe half (Just a guess). But most of those are not using it for anything complex. But it doesn't matter, it's that 1% of excel users and their sheet that is the problem. You'll find where it is WHEN you try to phase out excel. Not before. The report will be "I can no longer run our weekly report thing because google sheets/liberoffice doesn't run the macro and now we can't update the schedule for the drivers and they're angry, please advise". The solution, invariably, is not to throw a contractor at the problem and write a web service for it. It's to just let that sheet keep working another decade and pay the excel license. It's much much cheaper. But it also means that the long tail of Excel stays.

red_admiral 27d ago

This is a great replacement for Office Online and Onedrive, but will it work as a standalone desktop application that stores files to by home directory?