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Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

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Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#381

Post by hexbin010 »

amanzi wrote: post #240

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…

It's funny reading the child comments completely glossing over your comment and just suggesting using Zoho or Google Docs lol

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#382

Post by winternewt »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #64

They also are actively decreasing the value by sunsetting Publisher in October 2026 [0]. Hilariously, the suggested replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively open .pub files. The solution for that? Run a powershell script to convert all your publisher files to (uneditable) PDF. There are many memes about inserting photos into Word, and the content flying around and breaking. My pet theory is that…

The worst part about MS Office isn't the direct user experience, because I can usually choose to use other software. The worst part is that I and everybody else are subjected to the documents that Office produces. Their defaults and their UX inevitably produce stuff that is hard to read and inconsistent, unless you fight the software really hard and make sacrifices with your desired output. And there's no escape from it. Another specimen of Word's 2.5 cm margins, 200-character lines in poorly designed knockoff Helvetica will probably find its way to my mailbox before the end of the day.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#383

Post by danpalmer »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #191

Most people using excel and word would be just as functional using office '98. SaaS is largely just a cancer on society. Monthly subscription to pay for features you never use and bug fixes you never should have needed.

> Most people using excel and word would be just as functional using office '98.

This is just not at all true of the professional world. Home and student use, sure, but in business the office suite is deeply tied into workflows, business processes, approvals, review flows, version control, data analysis, data warehouses, and so much more.

There are companies that for all intents and purposes run on Excel. This goes far beyond spreadsheets, that's just the interface, it's the live data backing onto other services, it's the plugin systems, etc. My previous company ran significant processes on Google Sheets with a lot of automation built around it.

And then there's Sharepoint and all of that, all the sharing and access control is baked through the stack and available in all the frontends, whether that's on desktop, mobile, web, etc.

None of this was around in Office '98. There were some very early reaches into these sorts of things, but they would be unrecognisable now. We've progressed nearly 30 years after all.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#384

Post by Moru »

MangoToupe wrote: post #336
paulddraper wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The office you are talking about is not what it used to be a few decades ago. I am not into this world but what I know of it is like you are comparing a tool to the whole workshop. No, the tool does not replace the workshop, the tool is a very small part of the workshop.

There are alternatives but when you have bought into the full ecosystem of MS, it will take a lot of work to move.

(Full disclosure: I work with both Linux and Windows at a small company where Office means what you mean with office. They are all using libreoffice but call it office)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#385

Post by wombatpm »

shiroiuma wrote: post #301
rprend wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not in…

You are arguing the Oracle strategy, raise prices until it hurts, throw up roadblocks to switching and raise them some more.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#386

Post by joe_the_user »

amanzi wrote: post #240

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…

OK, supposed Claude in X many years could write a drop in replacement for every single one of those things. Would you raise your rates in the meantime too?

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#388

Post by simonjgreen »

bluedino wrote: post #274
wvenable wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How did it get this way? A million years ago we had Microsoft Office, PerfectOffice, Lotus SmartSuite, Lotus Symphony (which became one of the free suites), and others I can't remember. Then we had a bunch of Java and web versions built of various office appplications. It would be a massive undertaking to create a new office suite from scratch.

It’s the horizontal integration across Entra, not the Office experience, that is the lock in

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#389

Post by simonjgreen »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #64

They also are actively decreasing the value by sunsetting Publisher in October 2026 [0]. Hilariously, the suggested replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively open .pub files. The solution for that? Run a powershell script to convert all your publisher files to (uneditable) PDF. There are many memes about inserting photos into Word, and the content flying around and breaking. My pet theory is that…

InDesign also includes Pantone and is the logical go to for anyone who truly cares about modern DTP

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#390

Post by baka367 »

amanzi wrote: post #240

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…

Europe is doing a pretty good job on slowly veering off this addiction. Might be worth reaching out to them for knowledge sharing or two
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