Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

office365itpros.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 593 posts

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#541

Post by jmcphers »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #119

The only reason people still need office -- other than a niche of advanced Excel users -- is because no one, despite the last several decades, has managed to make a 100% compatible DOCX editor (not LibreOffice, not Apple Pages, not Google Docs). I'm guessing it's because there are aspects of it that MSFT keeps secret? The only reason I still use Word is because I don't want to have to deal with random layout incompat…

Microsoft was successfully sued by the EU for creating vendor lockin with their proprietary file formats. It is for this reason that the "X" formats (docx, pptx, etc.) are "open" and thoroughly "documented", e.g.:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_standards...

However, the formats are incredibly complicated, because they evolved from earlier formats that represented nearly the entire in-memory state of the editing software. To a first order of approximation, the .doc format _was_ Microsoft Word.

Source: I worked at Microsoft during this time period and helped document the XLSX format.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#542

Post by trollbridge »

wyre wrote: post #367
trollbridge wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of hard to understand what it does that Google Workspace + Zoom (or any other provider) doesn't? I'm seeing a very common pattern of Google Workspace + Google Meet, Zoom seats for people who need to remotely control computers, and then Slack or ones of its competitors for chat.

Google + Zoom + Slack is 3 separate accounts. Corporate only wants 1 account.

Speaking as someone running a small business, and working with larger (200 employee) small businesses, this really isn’t the case.

Most places have Google Workspace now. It’s pervasive. Most also have Microsoft 365 in some form or another. People generally want GMail, not Exchange.

Syncing users between Zoom and Google is completely trivial as is automating onboarding and offboarding.

Paying 3 annual accounts is not much different than 1… and is a bonus if it leaves you the option to completely migrate off of on.

(Incidentally a pattern I’m seeing is a place has Google Workspace plus Zoom, and then employees buy their own copy of Microsoft 365.)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#543

Post by jillesvangurp »

boh wrote: post #25

If most companies had to for some reason revert to Windows XP and MS Office from 1998, they would barely be impacted. There is literally no benefit to this subscription model besides paying for what you already have and what you don't want. None of this stuff needs to be on the cloud even for bigger firms. For the I need/like X in Office 365, it's not worth it from a costs perspective.

I listened to the acquired podcast where they interviewed Steve Ballmer for a few hours. Very nice to get that perspective.

But he commented quite a bit on how office licensing changed and how that made MS filthy rich. Around Office 97 was when they started emphasizing getting the full office suite as a licensing option. Especially for companies this was a big deal because you would just get all the office applications; whether you needed them or not.

And then later around 2011 they figured out that companies really didn't like having to deal with having to buy a lot of office licenses every few years. So it became a yearly subscription instead and at that point the revenue increased again, a lot.

It's the progressive insight that transitioned MS from being windows OEM license dependent (office came with the PC) to being more dependent on recurring SAAS revenue. Companies actually prefer this model. Even though it costs them more.

I've been free from any MS licenses since I started working for startups on a mac. I occasionally use Google docs and gmail. But I haven't really done anything with Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint etc. since 2012. You don't need any of that stuff to run a company. The rare case I deal with a customer that insists on that stuff, they can just give me access to the web version. Or send a PDF. Or one an office file that usually opens fine in drive.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#544

Post by Delk »

6510 wrote: post #319
esafak wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments in Europe are increasingly ditching Microsoft, goaded by souring relations between the continents.

Don't underestimate the rage from citizens who receive important documents and sheets in formats they can't open. Or you can open them but with a warning that some functionality might be lost. (reads like: you might go to prison)

I can't think of any official documents I'd be getting in Office file formats. Forms are mostly web ones or in some cases PDF, read-only documents are PDF. Maybe you can submit some documents or attachments in the Word format as a citizen but I wouldn't be surprised if PDF is already required anyway, or an image format for scans.

I'd be more worried about document interoperability between government agencies and other organizations such as companies that do work for the government. The government could of course mandate contractors to use an open source office suite which would extend the need for training to those companies.

Also, I've seen some orgs make heavy use of Office formats in terms of e.g. surprisingly elaborate formatting, document history and comments, and although I haven't tried to use those in LibreOffice, I wouldn't be sure it supports all of those in the same extent some people have learned to use them in Office.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#545

Post by 29athrowaway »

unixhero wrote: post #470
29athrowaway wrote: post #337

This office suite is less known but great: https://www.freeoffice.com/

Wow now where did this come from??? Never heard of it :)

Everyone is obsessed with LibreOffice, the grandchild of the slow and ugly Sun StarOffice.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#546

Post by reciprocity »

its_notjack wrote: post #505
reciprocity wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenOffice is no longer actively developed. It was replaced by LibreOffice quite awhile ago.

The comment links to Only Office, which is a different app suite from OpenOffice.

I appreciate the correction; I misread that. Thanks.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#547

Post by doubled112 »

abakker wrote: post #339
amanzi wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - that's what I was trying point out in my original comment. The desktop office apps are actually reasonably easy to swap out for a large portion of people. It's the rest of the M365 suite which is massive.

and, its so cheap. there are alternatives for individual components, but nothing that comes close to being this low cost. And, the ultimate value is that if you buy a niche tool (like notion) then only people with licenses can use it. Everybody at the company has office, so it's easy to share/collaborate. You have to really commit to avoiding office at all if you're going to replace parts of it.

Cheap is the same reason I ended up on an M365 family plan before they stopped allowing custom email domains. I'm grandfathered in, but I will probably end up paying more for just email when they decide to cancel the feature, plus needing to find a place to stash my off site backups.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#548

Post by [deleted] »

DeathArrow wrote: post #456
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off There aren’t the same thing. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emo…

>Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off. It would be a huge undertaking. You have to use tens of different software packages who weren't designed to work with each other, unlike MS offering. Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#549

Post by JumpCrisscross »

DeathArrow wrote: post #456
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off There aren’t the same thing. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emo…

>Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off. It would be a huge undertaking. You have to use tens of different software packages who weren't designed to work with each other, unlike MS offering. Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense…

> Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense to try it?

Maybe, if you can rally public resources behind you. Probably not given the value you can command in the private sector.

That’s the point. These people are expensive. Because they’re rare. There is a talent deficit at the top of tech, and if I had to describe it broadly, it’s in folks who can (a) write a letter to an elected representative that doesn’t get thrown in the nutter pile and (b) raise money.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#550

Post by unixhero »

29athrowaway wrote: post #545
unixhero wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow now where did this come from??? Never heard of it :)

Everyone is obsessed with LibreOffice, the grandchild of the slow and ugly Sun StarOffice.

Yes, but Libreoffice has been refactored and reengineered so much now that very little remains of the old codebase.
Post reply on HN