351–360 of 593 posts
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One word. Cloud. Sharepoint, onedrive, teams. Everything is integrated and collaborating is trivial. You can’t replicate that with open source.
Ok, but surely google docs does that just as well or even better? I have never even heard of sharepoint and onedrive!
Here in NZ, pretty much all medium/large businesses and govt departments have gone all-in with M365. Most govt departments are on the E5 licence, and have also started to roll out the Copilot licences too. The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues. It's all the data stored in SharePoin…
> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.
Usually people go to different places for different things of better quality. This is clear because there are lots of very successful competing products to Microsoft’s buffet.
The only moat I’d say Microsoft actually has is Excel. And maybe Powerpoint.
Everything else can be replaced easily and often with a far better dish.
Here in NZ, pretty much all medium/large businesses and govt departments have gone all-in with M365. Most govt departments are on the E5 licence, and have also started to roll out the Copilot licences too. The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues. It's all the data stored in SharePoin…
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Open Office, Libre Office, Only Office to start.
I want to love these, mostly because they're FOSS and Office/Google Spreadsheets seems to get more and more bloated, and subsequently slower. But the UX is just a lot worse, and it isn't easy to go from one application to another because they're slightly different enough that your productivity takes a hit from all the small papercuts. I'm waiting for some FOSS spreadsheet solution that doesn't just try to copy Office…
Speak for yourself. I see that LibreOffice's default UI is still a normal WIMP UI and this is a plus for me. I hated when MS Office switched to the ribbon in Office 2007.
"So you want to insert a row in a table? Great, just click on Table > Insert > Row... Oh well. Nevermind, just show me your screen and I'll hunt the functionality in that stupid ribbon."
We don't need less, but more, Office programs that respect GUI UI conventions.
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Suggesting libreoffice as an alternative to Office 365 is crazy.
Why? What feature does office 365 have that is so difficult to replace? I'm guessing support but... is there something more obvious? Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
> Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
That explains it I suppose.
Is there any reason to use Office nowadays except for being able to open documents sent by institutions where secretaries still use Word/Excel/PPT? (universities, etc.)
Excel is the best spreadsheet software in my experience when you have to move beyond the basics. I’ve even tried hard to use the open/Libre alternatives. Hacker News is a different world than the target customer base for these products. If your use case for spreadsheet software is putting things into tables with some formatting and some light formulas then all of the products will do the same job. For professionals w…
This might be true. But most Excel users just use the basics and would be well served to switching to a Free Software alternative such as LibreOffice Calc. Which, is also capable to be used in advanced contexts; although for those cases it is different than Excel, admittedly.
I think most of the excuses saying why people don't switch to Excel alternatives are simply coverups for inertia. I understand that; getting out of the comfort zone is difficult. But it's not impossible.
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> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.
> Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. I'd say it's more that this is the actual "developer shortage" that was being talked about a decade ago, but everyone mistakenly and stupidly interpreted it to be a shortage of tech workers for the larger firms. The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, co…
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> Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. I'd say it's more that this is the actual "developer shortage" that was being talked about a decade ago, but everyone mistakenly and stupidly interpreted it to be a shortage of tech workers for the larger firms. The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, co…
There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.
500 million users. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean an alternative doesn't exist.
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> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.
Microsoft is a buffet. You can get anything you want but it’s rare people leave a buffet saying “Man that food was great!” Usually people go to different places for different things of better quality. This is clear because there are lots of very successful competing products to Microsoft’s buffet. The only moat I’d say Microsoft actually has is Excel. And maybe Powerpoint. Everything else can be replaced easily and o…
Imagine organizing a meal out for 5 people. Easy. Despite the vegan, gluten free, kosher, high protein, lactose intolerant, no-fish, only fish, carb free dietary requirements there are lots of places to choose from. You can even order from 5 places and get 5 meals delivered.
Now do that for 50. Or 500. Or 50 000. Sooner or later you start going to buffets. Sooner or later the food becomes very bland.
You judge your software purchase for yourself based on features and moral principles and likely price.
Business doesn't really care about features. It does care about suppliers. It does care about the reliability of the supply chain. It doesn't care about price (at least not at the Windows / Office price point.)
I've been a supplier to corporates. The paperwork (and commitment) is substantial. Insurances, liabilities, support levels, release procedures, accountability,,,, it goes on for days.
The moat MS has, has nothing to do with software. Which is why that "better software" fails - because it is optimizing for one kind of "better" and business defines "better" another way.
And no, nothing is "replaced easily" in the enterprise space. When 10000 people, scattered over 1000 locations, get all-new software, nothing about that is easy.
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You are looking from the perspective of a user of the software - sure, these have enough feature parity to "compete". But that's the butt end of the equation. The real issue is enterprise administration. A user never thinks about this problem, because they do not ever encounter it as a problem in their private lives. How does permission work? How does a new hire get an account? How does account/permission revoking wo…
Large enterprises were doing this stuff with Unix and mainframes long before Microsoft figured out what preemptive multitasking was.