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Just completed some work with a large higher education client. There seems to be a real battle forming in education between Google and Microsoft. On one side t

by fpp 12y ago

Just completed some work with a large higher education client. There seems to be a real battle forming in education between Google and Microsoft. On one side the institutions cash strapped from years of government under-investment into education and with lots of their infrastructures long beyond end-of-life. On the other, large software vendors that - like with FMCG - want to create their products from childhood onward as everyday items that every child knows (and will continue to buy for the rest of their lives). Within higher education, at least in the UK, Microsoft seems to be winning in the moment. You have only a (very) small set of universities that are providing Google apps etc to their students. With HW - BYOD and that latest every second year student now has her own computer(s)has most likely helped a few of the universities to stay more easily afloat. Microsoft at the same time has managed to win over more than 60% of all universities in the UK (to use Office 365). One reason for that might also be that those universities that tried to provide Google Apps 1-2 years ago to their students mostly had rather negative experiences & many issues with the "roll-outs". But an even more important reason is the continuous dominance of MS Office in the business world - full proficiency with MS Office does still sound much better on a CV than having used Google Apps for 4 years. This is now intensifying with Microsoft providing MS Office for free directly to all students (including K12) latest from next month on. They have last week started to give free access to their mobile (iPad, Android - tablet solution soon arriving) versions and those are now leading the download charts of all app stores. BTW - real world stats show that about 2/3 students use MS Office on at least 2 devices (laptop plus 1-3 mobile). And the battle for the education infrastructures (storage space, business compute, thin clients - higher edu is one key client for that market) is also intensifying with MS now getting more aggressive with their virtualised desktop solution offerings (see also IE as a service). If Google wants to regain some ground here it needs to provide more turn-key solutions in the infrastructure area. With day-to-day web based and virtualised application infrastructure, the OS becomes more and more secondary for typical end users (HPC / scientific computing / design & engineering are completely different ballgames and dominated by Apple machines on one side and linux / unix clusters for the other use cases). When most mass use and productivity apps can be delivered to almost every machine including Chromebooks in those ways, the end user OS has fully become a commodity and decisions are / can be made mainly by the price / cost only. At that point Chromebooks (together e.g. with NUCs today, US$100 sticks to plug into monitors running Win8/10 / ChromeOS tomorrow) might become the cheapest option with all the consequences for the manufacturers (small margins, scale needed, etc).

netcan 12y ago
MSFT are impressive in their own way. They don't have the flashy flair and most of the stuff MSFT seem to want us to be impressed by isn't. What I think makes them impressive is staying power, long term endurance. They can weather a poor product, tweak it and get to good years after anyone is interested in talking about it. The backwards compatibility culture is part of that. They can keep up a steady pace uphill or downhill and get there. That's impressive. That said, I think Microsoft is very committed to a bunch of paradigms that are real losers. A windows machine, more than any of the "computers" that we have around us seem to be made for use by individuals under supervision and control of IT, in the school or office. I think that's a loser paradigm. The "personal" part of computers is important. I think it works better, and that is relevant in education. The paradigm is hard to kill because it helps them negotiate with school systems and work systems. Microsoft's marathon endurance for dealing with persistent hairiness lets organizations maintain their fragile ecosystems of servers, applications, permissions and such. These might be necessary, but they also pressure Microsoft into building a "faster horse" (to butcher the Ford cliche). Unless they can manage to put below median users in charge, I think they'll ultimately lose the education market. I don't know who will "win" but I think there's an inherent advantage to anything self sufficient and sell sustained, things that don't require a "roll out" or where the roll out is small and contained. Microsoft can do that stuff and I wouldn't even say it doesn't play to their strengths, but I would say it doesn't play to everyone else's weaknesses.
eitally 12y ago
If you haven't taken a look lately, Citrix & Ericom are both doing some really good stuff re: virtualized app & desktop delivery to ChromeOS devices. You are spot on in your comment regarding the reliance of business on MS Office, but I think that will continue to degrade over time as web-based alternatives become more powerful (especially in the areas of workflow automation & interconnectivity to pull from remote data sources) and user friendly. The one hugely compelling justification for businesses to deploy Chromebooks/boxes is the administration & support costs: it instantly drops to virtually nil compared to the same for a Windows environment. I think it's going to be interesting to see whether Googles' strategy of encouraging lowest common denominator consumerization of the enterprise while only building "support" infrastructure is effective faster or slower than Microsoft's strategy of going the opposite direction.

by fpp 12y ago

netcan 12y ago

MSFT are impressive in their own way. They don't have the flashy flair and most of the stuff MSFT seem to want us to be impressed by isn't. What I think makes them impressive is staying power, long term endurance. They can weather a poor product, tweak it and get to good years after anyone is interested in talking about it. The backwards compatibility culture is part of that. They can keep up a steady pace uphill or downhill and get there. That's impressive. That said, I think Microsoft is very committed to a bunch of paradigms that are real losers. A windows machine, more than any of the "computers" that we have around us seem to be made for use by individuals under supervision and control of IT, in the school or office. I think that's a loser paradigm. The "personal" part of computers is important. I think it works better, and that is relevant in education. The paradigm is hard to kill because it helps them negotiate with school systems and work systems. Microsoft's marathon endurance for dealing with persistent hairiness lets organizations maintain their fragile ecosystems of servers, applications, permissions and such. These might be necessary, but they also pressure Microsoft into building a "faster horse" (to butcher the Ford cliche). Unless they can manage to put below median users in charge, I think they'll ultimately lose the education market. I don't know who will "win" but I think there's an inherent advantage to anything self sufficient and sell sustained, things that don't require a "roll out" or where the roll out is small and contained. Microsoft can do that stuff and I wouldn't even say it doesn't play to their strengths, but I would say it doesn't play to everyone else's weaknesses.

eitally 12y ago

If you haven't taken a look lately, Citrix & Ericom are both doing some really good stuff re: virtualized app & desktop delivery to ChromeOS devices. You are spot on in your comment regarding the reliance of business on MS Office, but I think that will continue to degrade over time as web-based alternatives become more powerful (especially in the areas of workflow automation & interconnectivity to pull from remote data sources) and user friendly. The one hugely compelling justification for businesses to deploy Chromebooks/boxes is the administration & support costs: it instantly drops to virtually nil compared to the same for a Windows environment. I think it's going to be interesting to see whether Googles' strategy of encouraging lowest common denominator consumerization of the enterprise while only building "support" infrastructure is effective faster or slower than Microsoft's strategy of going the opposite direction.