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Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

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Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#81

Post by vkaku »

_joel wrote: post #71
vkaku wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Boo Hoo. IT departments for Non Profits that aren't actually like OpenAI. Right.

Yes, I'm a CTO for one.

Running Non Profit and managing infrastructure for pennies, is a real problem these non profits / small companies face.

If a multi trillion dollar company won't afford to burn a few million a month, good luck getting any of these folks to buy and host their Sharepoint for cheap.

This is not just a technical problem, and you know it. These people need real solutions, and asking for them to have an IT department isn't practically economical for them.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#84

Post by margalabargala »

brookst wrote: post #74
margalabargala wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Just because an entity is able to do things with serious consequences, does not mean they are a serious entity. For other examples, see school shooters in the US.

Drink drivers and other reckless endangerment as well.

Right, exactly. "Oh yeah? Well I drive drunk" is not a valid rebuttal to "you are not a serious person".

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#85

Post by Dylan16807 »

docjay wrote: post #28
NordSteve wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph of the email: We strongly advise transitioning your users to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits, before the subscription is cancelled, to avoid disruption and data loss. Connect now with your current Microsoft partner – or find a partner – to get started. Learn more about what happens to your data and access when your subscription ends. That last sentence links to https://learn.micros…

I wish they’d just use clear and blunt language, rather than “strongly advise” and “to avoid.” I’m reminded of my bank sending “Important account information” mail that contains advertising OR actual important information, but at like a 20:1 ratio. “YOUR FILES WILL BE DELETED ON {DATE}” seems like it would have solved any ambiguity.

More important than that is you have a date where you lock the data, and a date where you actually delete it, and those dates are months apart. Even if the emails are going into a black hole that shouldn't result in data loss. Don't have everything working as usual one day and gone forever the next.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#86

Post by Dylan16807 »

_joel wrote: post #45
KetoManx64 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try to offload responsibility from them, but every IT and DevOps person that has an inkling of competence knows you don't store your backups in the same place as your prod data.

It wasn't?

In the sense that I haven't seen any evidence there were backups, yeah they didn't have backups and prod in the same location.

Or are you nitpicking about the word "prod"? Pretend they said "primary copy" instead.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#87

Post by etc-hosts »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #25
rbanffy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their cloud provider was in charge of backups.

You can try to offload responsibility from them, but every IT and DevOps person that has an inkling of competence knows you don't store your backups in the same place as your prod data.

hard to run your production in Iron Mountain backup tier

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#89

Post by eddythompson80 »

lelandfe wrote: post #76
valicord wrote: post #68

According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/sub... the data should not be deleted for 90 days after license expiration - what am I missing?

> This article applies to all Microsoft 365 for business subscriptions I suspect the nonprofit arrangement is not an example of a "Microsoft 365 for business subscription" Although the old nonprofit FAQ calls it, "the Microsoft 365 Business Premium nonprofit offer" https://web.archive.org/web/20260223193546/https://www.micro...

I really highly doubt that. The way Microsoft uses the “for business” branding is not in an IRS/legal way to distinguish between for-profit vs nonprofit entities. Rather more like “Discord vs Slack” or “a subreddit vs zendesk” type offering.

“For Organizations” would really have been a more appropriate branding. Governments around the world, including the US government, used plenty of “For Business” software from Microsoft. However, the “for business” branding tells you where the money came from.

So a nonprofit would almost certainly be on a “for business” subscription type. That is to distinguish it from a “for students”, “for home”, or the default “for one person” subscription type.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#90

Post by fwipsy »

pschastain wrote: post #80
Grimblewald wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

producing an os with a focus on utility to end user would be a start. Even just something that makes some form of effort to give users a return on investment on their hardware. Right now, you unluck massive headroom, battery life, and stability, on a laptop by simple putting linux on it. All that despite windows enjoying better all around driver support from manufacturers. A serious company would never have allowed i…

MS's core product is and always has been Office, specifically Excel. Windows is simply the delivery method

What about Azure? Looks like it takes more revenue than Windows and Office put together.
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