Comment on Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.

  There’s a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I’m not a professional. So they’d have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to “let’s not change anything”.

  So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.

  The same goes for “Google Business Suite” or some such. Making the effort to roll your own would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It’s cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don’t work as desired. These people just don’t see it as a priority. Don’t understand the dangers.

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    teachers dint go to school for tech, i would give them a pass.

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  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yep.

    MSFT will continue to enshittify, people who point out this will happen will be poo-poo’d because switching would be complicated and costly…

    … But, having to panic switch sometime down the road, because an entire class of software features or pricing models drastically alter with little warning…

    … Well then, in the long run, it would have been less costly to start the migration strategy earlier.

    I have seen this play out at every single company or non profit I have ever worked at, and I have learned to leave about 6 months after a planned migration/mitigation strategy gets canned as too costly and unnecessary… because usually, 6 months or so after that, every one is now in panic mode, and my workload would triple.

    Including literally at MSFT itself.

    The managers and corporate don’t know anything other than maximize short term profits, and have astounding levels of normalcy bias; even if you can present a well resesrched, realistic scenario with detailed costs over time for different strategies… they basically always assume things will just be fine, untill its far too late.

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  • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Was gonna say this is exactly why Chromebooks and Google docs is popular.

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  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    LibreOffice is not a replacement for M365 though, it’s a replacement for Office. M365 is not just office.

    LibreOffice doesn’t give every user 1TB of cloud storage space. It doesn’t give you a company email address and management tools for users. It doesn’t give you 95% of what M365 does.

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    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS)

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      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        You said this too:

        So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365

        As I said, LibreOffice can’t be used instead of MS365 unless you want to lose 95% of the features of 365.

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• Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  There’s really no competitor for large orgs with robust technology needs.

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  • homesnatch@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    There are absolutely large orgs in the Google and Apple ecosystems. My org, for example, doesn’t use Microsoft except for a smattering of Excel and Word subscriptions to deal with some customer documents that aren’t handled well by Google Docs and Google Sheets.

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    • Cort@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yeah, anyone who uses Excel on a professional level can tell you Google sheets etc are NO substitute for Excel. Just so many things the competitors just can’t do

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      • homesnatch@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        For financials, only the companies still in the dark ages depend on Excel rather than real ERP or accounting software.

        Sheets handles pretty much all typical business needs, but we do run into issues if we’re collaborating with another company that is using macros or something in Excel.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        My brother is an accountant and uses sheets for a lot of non-work stuff, and specialized software for most business needs. He also uses Excel, sure, but there are substitutes for Excel in a lot of cases.

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      • pastermil@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        What about libreoffice? What are the things you can only achieve with MS Excel?

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    • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      How are you handling compliance/legal obligations like DLP policies on your email and cloud storage, legal holds and investigations, data tagging, and retention policies? I’m under the impression that only Microsoft offers those in a single product.

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      • homesnatch@lemm.ee ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Legal Hold is easy in the Google Workspace using Google Vault and DLP is a native feature-set for Enterprise plans. Audit and investigation features are very thorough and we’ve used them extensively.

        We do use an additional third-party endpoint DLP software with TLS inspection as well.

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The article clearly states that this non-profit moved from Google to Microsoft after Google started charging lol

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• gradual@lemmings.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Yeah. They honestly get what they deserve at this point.

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Especially when you can use literally any other word process and program and save in Microsoft document formats.

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