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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

#581

Post by amanzi »

hexbin010 wrote: post #381
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

I know! Google *Workspace* is about the closest competitor to M365, but here in NZ I don't see any large orgs switching to it. There was one that I knew about it, but they switched back to M365 after a couple of years.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#582

Post by amanzi »

wodenokoto wrote: post #370
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…

This is why I’m surprised by headlines like this”nobody wants to by Microsoft’s AI” like, every corporate M365 user must be either considering it or already started the purchasing process.

Yep, and a lot of the responses to those "nobody wants to by Microsoft's AI" articles seem to get confused with the annoying copilot buttons that are popping up everywhere, and the actual enterprise-AI features that MS are pushing. I've seen and heard of a lot of uptake in the M365 AI paid features, and they seem genuinely useful - you can build and publish agents that have access to internal documents, staff can ask copilot to summarise their last day's worth of emails, transcribe Teams meetings with summaries, etc, etc. All protected by the same controls that you already get with M365 (further locking you in!)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#583

Post by hulitu »

b3lvedere wrote: post #454
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 makes financial sense to go all-in and use as much as possible." .. until it doesn't. There is a very good reason why switching away from M365 is almost impossible. There is a very good reason why Microsoft offers free consultancy for a while if you just keep using M365. Microsoft has made the world dependent on them. They are one of the biggest corporations that use drug lord tactics to keep its users. The Europ…

> Which is very very difficult when

... they pay so good. It is funny how politicians forget about everything when they see a green piece of paper on the table.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#584

Post by thewebguyd »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #478
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.

No one has developed a full alternative in one package. That's because some of the practices are really bad and shouldn't be solved the way the GP describes they are solved. Data stored in SharePoint, the worst MS tool ever maybe, is one example. O e wouldn't build another SharePoint, because why make something that sucks so much and then store data in it? It is moronic to do that. And the GP is right in that the mor…

No one uses sharepoint because it's good or was ever good, everyone knows it sucks. They use it precisely because it's a) bundled with 365 already and b) already very well integrated into the rest of the entire ecosystem. No developer time is needed to get automations, external sharing with encryption, and any other numerous features.

So sure, one wouldn't build another SharePoint on its own, but there's still room to build an entire package like M365 and do it right, and integrate solutions that don't suck.

But no one does, because it's expensive as hell. Good luck building something just as comprehensive and integrated and selling it for a measly $22/user/month.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#585

Post by albedoa »

MangoToupe wrote: post #344
lll-o-lll wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Wait where did you run off to.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#586

Post by dabockster »

tombert wrote: post #283
dabockster wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the last pre-subscription version Heads up that you can still buy perpetual licenses to Office either directly from Microsoft or through other sellers throughout the internet. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

They're routinely cheap on Groupon as well, often under $30. https://www.groupon.com/deals/world-office-standard-2024 Not that I want to encourage people to keep using Microsoft products.

I want viable alternatives too. But Microsoft's stuff accounts for a million+ edge cases that you don't really encounter until you're neck deep into whatever you're working on.

For the sake of conversation, though, there's SoftMaker Office:

https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office

But they're a subscription too. You save only $20 a year for less features than Office 365 as well (especially the lack of an email program). For most people, that savings and "no Microsoft" isn't enough.

> LibreOffice

No.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#587

Post by dabockster »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #362
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.

> 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…

> 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.

That's exactly what I'm saying! Heck, I just talked to a senior dev from AWS a week ago that was a massive technical expert, but obviously couldn't code their way to an actual product on their own. Which is fine, and hence my original comment on the current rarity of those skillsets.

> “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work

Ehhhhhhh hard to say really. The one-time payment versions of Office still exist, work totally fine, and have excellent add-on extension support. You could move the economics around a bit between consumers and extension developers, but that would probably be it.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#588

Post by dabockster »

71bw wrote: post #412
typon wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office 500 million users. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean an alternative doesn't exist.

Issue is, the WPS office suite is more bloated with ads than even Microsoft's offerings are, and, overall, is quite a doozy to navigate. If you want a true and good alternative, I'd recommend ONLYOFFICE[1]. [1] https://www.onlyoffice.com/

WPS Office is Chinese. OnlyOffice is Russian.

Those really only exist because of Western tech sanctions.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#589

Post by dabockster »

1718627440 wrote: post #475
lomase wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ActiveDirectory is million times better than any other solution on the market.

You do you. Last time I needed it, setting up libpam-mysql was fairly quick.

Active Directory is a very no-code tool and has a ton of documentation and certifications online, no college degree required. And it's built by paid devs with a verifiable software supply chain.

I just looked up libpam-mysql and it is not no-code at all. And it looks like an unpaid community project which allows contributions from anywhere. That's not a true replacement.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#590

Post by dabockster »

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…

> 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 increase the prices ten-fold?

*bald eagle screeches*

Ahem... https://www.ftc.gov/

They may have an issue with that.

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