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.
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, communications, and software development to pull this off are extremely few and far between right now. And even then, I just listed four specialties that historically have been specialized by a single person for each field - something like this would require a given person having a sufficient breadth of knowledge in all of them at the same time. It's a very tall order.
And that's all just to compete on Windows. Adding Mac and Linux into the mix makes it even harder.
Literally everything sucks right now because all industries are running a massive software deficit. It's just not possible (and maybe not economical viable) to build enough software to make everything not suck. We are making do with the scraps we have.
That's good and expect that could be shaved down even more. I was spending most of time just waiting for it do the work.
But I don't know if that fundamentally changes the situation or not. We've had steady improvements in developer technology for decades. Even pre-LLM, I'm building significantly more complicated applications now in less time than ever before. But as quickly as our developer technology improved, the demands on applications we build has gone up. I'm not sure even LLMs can outpace the demand for software.
Honestly, it's been my experience that there's no motivation to do this, either. Many of the people that buy the software are more interested in a shiny, new button than they are in making sure all the existing buttons do what they want. And they each want a _different_ shiny, new button... and too many (barely functional) features just makes a product worse.
> not economical viable
I think that's part of the key. Nobody wants to pay for great software
I was working at a particular organisation 13 years ago, and we were tired. Everything was a half completed project. Everything needed work. One of the file servers was busted. We had cobbled together enough to make the customer experience ok, but the guts were on the deck.
The organisation expanded, hired a new CTO, moved the old Pseudo CTO to an architect role. New CTO sat down with everyone in the team for a 1 on 1 chat.
He asked what the biggest issue was, I said we needed time to fix everything and make it work. He said everyone on the team told him the same thing. That we have a solid environment and it just needs to be completed.
Next day he announces a shift to the cloud. We had all our priorities suspended as we forced 365 and Azure into everything. I bailed like 3 weeks later.
Cross-platform compatibility is trivial with modern tooling IMO.
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?
A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits.
And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?
Suddenly, many IT admins were in a tough spot explaining to many internal customers (including senior management; even CxO's have Java on their office laptops) why their PCs were suddenly flooded with popup ads and even ads on intranet sites (because Ask toolbar integrated into the browser)).
Google used to have a motto/policy of "Do Not Evil", but it silently dropped that approach. It had to do so, because its biggest rivals had already adopted and profited from the evil attitudes, so it too simply followed the evil tide.
The world has always been ruled by the oligarchs (the richest and most powerful people), but in modern era, it is the biggest corporates (especially trillion dollar valuation companies) that call the shots. And they continue do as they please, bending even powerful nations to their will.
"Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the average customer demand in the market."
Business, sure, but there are millions of consumers who exclusively use Google Docs, iWork, or other Office alternatives.
Things can be done in such ways that there is nothing visibly incompatible (ie scripting behind some forms), you can always just print and fill the document if needed, and anyway most documents are static pdfs with optional plus for filling some fields in computer.
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.
I hope I am wrong on this. I hate that public infrastructure and bureaucracy runs on Microsoft.
I've never used it but apparently it comes with ingame purchases.
WPS apparently has 80% market share in Chinese government and state owned enterprise. They used MS from 2000-2005, In 2006 they released Uniform Office Format (UOF) which MS doesn't support(!?) UOF works better with Chinese fonts. 2012 Kingsoft offered Enterprise WPS and became the standard.
Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
Sharepoint, onedrive, teams. Everything is integrated and collaborating is trivial. You can’t replicate that with open source.
> Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
That explains it I suppose.
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)
Yeah, just as we forgot about the "paperless office" metric we seemingly forgot about MS Office file formats. "But can I open that file someone sends me?" hasn't been the central driver in quite a while.
But I guess it's a bit of a moat nonetheless: IT departments just not considering any other cloud solution that would (in addition to the pains of the cloud migration) also require weening employees off Excel/Word/Powerpoint. People don't even ask themselves wether that would (still) be hard or not, it feels like a safe assumption that it will.
and thats the problem, the fair comparison would be like You replace AWS with hetzner vps
Not to mention, the data guarantees around Copilot are super enterprise compatible. Its not that companies want copilot, its that they know if they don't provide a solution, users will desire path into something with dodgy data security. So they provide "The Best" in the IBM sense of protecting the business and their jobs, which is Copilot.
It takes a bit of doing but your end state is, user logs into PC, signs in SSO, they get all their apps (remote and local), their emails, their documents, their collab and neither they or you need to think about it.
Oh and to continue, theres the whole Purview suite which is purpose built to integrate into large business data security incidents. I know of MSPs who wont be seen without Exchanges litigation hold / related tools because they have been saved from prosecution. Defender has not just grown more tentacles its like 3 different complete octopi at this point. Defender for Endpoint is particularly difficult to get away from because it does so damn much in the way of logging and monitoring for very little standup cost.
If you sat down most large orgs and created a list of what they may need to replace if they were getting rid of Office365 + supporting/supported features you would probably find its a lot more work. They are everywhere. Theres a turnkey(ish) microsoft solution that grows out the side of 365s head for every big business problem.
Intune. Hello. Man it just keeps going on.
> It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues.
It goes on!
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 work? How does audit work? And that's just the surface.
Needs for large enterprises, where you cannot just have John from HR make a new account for the new hire, are often not met by the opensource world.
The point isn't that but the fact that like a normal user, a normal business don't want to have to tinker with low level components to get the functionality they want. They desire to pay and get a working piece of infrastructure with low hassle (tho i get saying active directory being low hassle is weird).
I do not need to create it, it already exists. Yes, you can write your own pam module, but in general you do not need to.
> just use what Microsoft sells you.
Which means now your employees need to manually sync the MS and your internal databases. Depends on how much your employees time is worth for you. I mean a lot of companies do exactly that, but it is certainly not the cheaper option.
Also using what MS sells is also illegal. Not that anyone cares, as whole Europe ignores that, but when you meet a civil servant on the wrong foot, your company is toast.
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.
So my configuration is this (I only redacted the company name, the remaining is copied verbatim):
users.host = /run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
users.database = Company
users.db_user = mail
users.db_passwd = $(secret-tool lookup user mail@mysql)
users.table = User
users.user_column = username
users.password_column = password
users.password_crypt = Y
Then tell me how I put your "no-code tool" into the VCS?
> no college degree required
Yeah, which nearly everyone has, but now you need to run through tons of certification programs instead. Which cost a lot of money, so you have the "Certified Rockstar Active Directory Consultant Adviser (TM)"
> it looks like an unpaid community project
> built by paid devs with a verifiable software supply chain.
Which is how most FOSS OS work, which have way more of a verifiable supply chain than your proprietary closed-source OS from Microsoft.
> it is not no-code at all. no college degree required.
Which totally matters, because you want random Joe who hasn't even finished college to be able to mess around with the company authentication setup.
Decision in Enterprise organizations are not done by the end user and non of your options, not even Google Docs, offers the equality of features.
M365 is far more than just Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams (apart from some apps depending on the M365 tier you are in like Access, Project, Visio etc.), you buy a whole workspace. Users can seamlessly share and work together on documents, not only in their organization but also with others. It's easy to process information from one app to the other etc.
Yes, Google Docs might be the closest thing when it comes to features (but no match), however, looking at local restrictions and laws, Microsoft is one of the few companies that can host you M365 solution in an environment that, for example, matches european laws.
And that is the big problem, there are no alternatives for companies that are already on M365 and using the features of it.
LibreOffice, etc. may see similar from the UI end but if you're scaling across multiple sites/archetypes/employee models/regulatory environments, -and- want access to a wide and deep pool of administrative labor, M365 is seamless by comparison.
*bald eagle screeches*
Ahem... https://www.ftc.gov/
They may have an issue with that.
500 million users. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean an alternative doesn't exist.
If you want a true and good alternative, I'd recommend ONLYOFFICE[1].
Those really only exist because of Western tech sanctions.
While more efficient in some areas, it's missing a lot of quality of life tools plus legal/compliance/security tooling.
> 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 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 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.
> 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.
If there was one that i would put that could go head to head and possibly pull it off would be Corel[1], their suite is pretty comprehensive along with their collaborative suite.
Althogh from their businesss model seems they are content to maintain a narrow market and possible still remember getting burned by MS in the early days.
Or SoftMaker ([1], [2]) with their product SoftMaker Office ([3], [4]).
[1] https://www.softmaker.com/en/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker
> The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off are extremely few and far between right now.
I think the problem is different: those who are capable of pulling off such a task commonly lack the "business credibility" that is necessary so that C-level executives would buy a product from them.
Getting the skills in all these disciplines is a much-more-than-fulltime job. If you spend all your time cramming, you simply don't have time to build this "business credibility".
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.
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.
Is there? Maybe Google docs.
It's amazing that Microsoft has, for the most part, not really changed their fundamental office software for over a decade and yet there is very little actual competition. People call it bland but I've yet to see any real competition to the whole package.
Tell this to all office alternative lmao
I tried them all and all they do is sucks, even the strongest competitor is (google docs,sheet) feels "lacking"
And the GP is right in that the more moronic stuff people do, the harder it gets for them to no longer do that and somehow extract all their data into usable and useful form. Microsoft will happily go on making bad products, if that keeps its users prisoners.
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.
It's just extremely complicated to transition between the two. So Google is more popular with newer companies, since it's a bit more seamless being cloud-native, whereas Microsoft has inertia with companies that have been around longer.
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.
Companies that had a successful niche, like Lotus, failed to keep up.
On Microsoft admin/entra/management webpages each weblink does something completely different, yet it provides a very convenient interface.
I guess there's a strong opportunity for someone to build a Linux distro that bundles all of it for you in such a way you could use it OOTB for a company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_365_applicat...
It looks like a lot of the project planning SAAS are trying to take the crown too.
It’s just strange that Google seemingly gave up.
Google Workspace is extremely popular with new features coming out constantly, used by tons of corporations.
Is it just not on your radar or something?