[dpoloncsak]

Imo, as long as companies are paying for E3 licenses, they won't pay for another solution. And they'll be paying Microsoft for licenses as long as they have Active Directory, right? Seems like the whole Microsoft ecosystem is built on AD (and probably Excel too)

[knallfrosch]

Yes, AD is the value proposition. Your employees can get cloud-synced, multi-user real-time editing of documents. This is what kills the "but my Linux app can do it for free."

It runs on-premise, has all kinds of certificates and has a history of half a cenutry (give or take.) That kills Google Docs.

It's cross-paltform, killing whatever Apple thinks it has.

Too many people think Word is a text editor. I'd use Notepad++ if it had full AD integration. But it doesnt.

[bgnn]

French and German governments are working on an alternative to this: https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/home/

[orthoxerox]

They also have Grist, an Airtable replacement.

Which I see this "suite numerique" integrates as well.

[thewebguyd]

> And they'll be paying Microsoft for licenses as long as they have Active Directory, right?

They'll be paying long beyond on-prem AD as well. EntraID is becoming the new identity system. If you're already on E3/E5, you might as well make use of it, and making most use of it means being stuck in the whole Microsoft ecosystem.

Why bother looking for alternatives, even if one particular product might be better, when Microsoft gives you literally everything at at least a mediocre level, for one price and pre-integrated.

[dpoloncsak]

>Why bother looking for alternatives, even if one particular product might be better, when Microsoft gives you literally everything at at least a mediocre level, for one price and pre-integrated.

This is exactly why we switched from Zoom to Teams

[marcosdumay]

If you keep linking enough problematic options in an "all or nothing" package, at some point people flip to the other choice you are giving them.

It's looking like Windows will be more of an issue here than anything in Office. But either way they can only push people so far.

[thewebguyd]

> It's looking like Windows will be more of an issue here than anything in Office.

And even then, Microsoft will be happy because even if Windows were to dissappear tomorrow, people would still be buying Microsoft 365 licenses and just using the very same tech and app stack from their mac.

[OCTAGRAM]

Mac OS X Server has Open Directory, and there were others