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by pocketsand 693 days ago
I would disagree. I work in healthcare and we’ve always used SQL Server. While I wouldn’t pick it, it’s been reliable and integrates with auth.

No one “loves” Teams, but honestly it serves its purpose for us at no cost.

No one loves OneDrive but it works.

I think people underestimate how much work it would take to integrate services, train people, and meet compliance requirements when using a handful of the best in class products instead of MS Suite.
2 comments
mbreese 693 days ago
People use Teams and OneDrive because it’s “Free” when you use Office. IMO, that’s a bit of an anti-trust problem. Both have good competitors (arguably better competitors) that are getting squeezed because of the monopoly pricing with Office.

But with SQL Server, on the other hand, I think you are right. It is a good piece of software. But it also has high quality competition from multiple vendors. Some of it enterprise (Oracle, DB2), some of it FOSS (Postgres, MySQL). Because of this, it has to be better quality to survive… they couldn’t bundle it to get market share, it actually had to compete.

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josephd79 693 days ago
Word, no one uses teams because its great. The only reason it's used is because it's bundled with $M365.
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throwaway3306a 693 days ago
People use Teams because it's well integrated into Office, 365, Entra and other MS products, they would (and recently do) pay for it. It has functionalities that no other alternative has, e.g. it can act as a full call centre solution through a SIP gateway.
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digging 693 days ago
"Well integrated" is honestly a stretch, but it is fair to say it's integrated with no extra setup.
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throwaway3306a 692 days ago
How to manage Slack access control via Azure AD groups? Even the most basic integrations are missing in other options...
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ta1243 693 days ago
> No one “loves” Teams, but honestly it serves its purpose for us at no cost.

Of course there's a cost, its just hidden and you are forced to pay it. Microsoft used its monopoly position to move into a new market.

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pocketsand 693 days ago
Yeah, sure. But the marginal cost is zero, whereas a Slack subscription for every person in our org will cost about 1 million dollars a year. And it doesn’t integrate as well with every other piece of functional but mediocre software.

The person approving the $1 million dollar budget item doesn’t really care that Teams isn’t “free” in the sense that there is no free lunch, and while they perhaps have moral qualms of antitrust, that’s outside their purview. We’re locked into Office suite and right now there is no extra charge for Teams.

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ta1243 693 days ago
Which is why the legal process is simply too slow for big tech

Microsoft did a massively illegal thing (again) and got away with it

Time to hold companies responsible for their suppliers.

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