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Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#61
post #50
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it with Microsoft and confusing product naming schemes? There was Xbox One X/Xbox One S/Xbox Series S/Xbox Series X. Or .NET (previously .NET Core) vs. .NET Framework (which everyone used to just call “.NET”).

I can't tell you how many times I've had customers buy the wrong MS product because the naming schemes are so confusing. Honestly for how often this happens and how long it's been part of their company it feels like us the consumer are on the butt end of some inside joke.

A little over a decade ago MS used to offer a full multi day course with certification simply to understand their licensing. If you were a reseller you needed at least some of your people to go through it if not all of them.

The funniest part was by the time they had got their certification, their information would often be outdated, so even their licensing experts would often be wrong about their licensing.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#63
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's this "Office 365" you're mentioning? Microsoft has, I kid you not, actually renamed Office 365 to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Of which Copilot is one part, like Word and Excel. Yes, a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription gives you access to Microsoft Word and Microsoft Copilot. Please don't confuse it with GitHub Copilot, a completely different product. Or with Copilot Search in Bing.

What is it with Microsoft and confusing product naming schemes? There was Xbox One X/Xbox One S/Xbox Series S/Xbox Series X. Or .NET (previously .NET Core) vs. .NET Framework (which everyone used to just call “.NET”).

>> What is it with Microsoft and confusing product naming schemes?

You can use Windows App [1] to connect to Windows to run your Windows apps.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-app/overview

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#64
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's this "Office 365" you're mentioning? Microsoft has, I kid you not, actually renamed Office 365 to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Of which Copilot is one part, like Word and Excel. Yes, a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription gives you access to Microsoft Word and Microsoft Copilot. Please don't confuse it with GitHub Copilot, a completely different product. Or with Copilot Search in Bing.

What is it with Microsoft and confusing product naming schemes? There was Xbox One X/Xbox One S/Xbox Series S/Xbox Series X. Or .NET (previously .NET Core) vs. .NET Framework (which everyone used to just call “.NET”).

Microsoft marketing execs all rename their human children too, once they reach age 2.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#65
Microsoft will lose near 0% of customers over this. They might even gain market share! Existing customers will complain and then learn to live with and continue paying.

There's nothing any of their competitors can do - look at Slack vs. Teams. Those who don't like it found alternatives a long time ago.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#67
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, MS knows it’s a captive audience and enterprises aren’t rushing to exit Microsoft anytime soon so they continue to get away with it. That is the traditional spin but if they pull many stunts like this how long will it continue? Corporate IT teams are infamous for being slow and unwieldy but that's not entirely fair because the corporate IT teams are usually also the ones on the hook if anything goes wr…

Who are these companies going to go to? Moving away from MS products is notoriously hard for larger enterprises.

Apple for hardware. Maybe a few orgs even try PCs running Linux as we've seen in some governments looking to save $$$.

Google or countless smaller but established services for all the online stuff. The days when all businesses used Windows and Office for everything and the competitors were half-baked also-rans are long gone.

There is no lack of IT companies that will take your money if you're willing to move out of the Microsoft bubble. This is a momentum problem not a lack of competition problem.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are these companies going to go to? Moving away from MS products is notoriously hard for larger enterprises.

Apple for hardware. Maybe a few orgs even try PCs running Linux as we've seen in some governments looking to save $$$. Google or countless smaller but established services for all the online stuff. The days when all businesses used Windows and Office for everything and the competitors were half-baked also-rans are long gone. There is no lack of IT companies that will take your money if you're willing to move out of t…

Apple hardware can work, so long as the business isn’t dependent on any legacy desktop windows stuff (but there’s always VMs or RDP in that case).

But it is still somewhat a competition problem. Google workspace has better collaboration/live editing IMO but still lacks in some areas. Microsoft’s compliance/DLP stuff is better, InTune while not the best has actually shaped up to be a pretty good MDM and works on all OSes both desktop and mobile (including Linux), and you get endpoint EDR bundled as well as zero trust VPN (global secure access).

Google has no answer to a big chunk of what locks big enterprise into M365, but workspace is fine for medium and smaller companies that don’t need all of what MS has.

But I think those smaller companies are where the disruption will start.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#69

Microsoft will lose near 0% of customers over this. They might even gain market share! Existing customers will complain and then learn to live with and continue paying. There's nothing any of their competitors can do - look at Slack vs. Teams. Those who don't like it found alternatives a long time ago.

Sysadmin here and this is the unfortunate truth. This is already disabled in my tenant along with the million other “features” MS shoves down our throats monthly.

But, we remain and businesses have no appetite to exit Microsoft, not that there’s an equivalent bundled competitior to everything a 365 license gets you.

So I keep tabs on what’s coming out of Redmond, curse at them inside, and then disable the crap and move on with my job.

MS knows no one is leaving so they continue to get away with it.

Re: Microsoft allows use of personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions at work

#70

Are they trying to get more training data?

More likely not enough businesses paying for Copilot licenses so they need to get employees using it to put pressure on IT teams to cave in and buy once a high up enough employee complains that it’s become essential to their job so they can boost Copilot sales and make line go up.
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