Sony believed that they had so much market share that they could make a console that was leaps and bounds more complicated to code for, which would lock devs in and prevent them from going elsewhere, and they’d just have to suck it up because of said market share. Sony was wrong, and they lost out big time that generation (although they did manage to win the Blu-ray vs hd-dvd format wars).
Microsoft seems to believe they have so much market share that they can force people to upgrade to a privacy invading, ai infested piece of crap, and that everyone needs to suck it up because market share.
I’ve already started hearing wind that people, in statistically significant numbers, are finding alternatives… so is this the same situation as the ps3?
Just a passing musing without much to back up the gut feelings.
And Microsoft might be right this time. My mid size organization for example is locked in to microsoft, we use the Office suite, AD, Teams, their ERP system, Windows servers, Windows desktops, outlook, etc.
I would love to go the Foss route but let’s be real, the costs that would save would quickly be overshadowed with learning to set it all up.
Let me know if I’m wrong here, I really am open to moving over but it’s a massive undertaking.
Steps to slowly escape are this:
Alternatively can do the same with “Univention Corporate Server (UCS)”, which is the same stuff, but packaged with a nicer UI (it’s a paid product, based on Debian)
In the short term, even if it’s free, having someone do this work will definitely cost more than paying the license for windows server + all the user CALs + the office 365 subscriptions but I think ROI in 5-7 years
None of that is really feasible though
Average office worker won’t even notice the difference between using a spreadsheet in onlyoffice shared with colleagues in nextcloud vs using a Microsoft® Excel document over onedrive.
Nextcloud talk with the php backend sucks but compared to Microsoft teams isn’t that awful anymore
And using smb4 as active directory server is completely undistinguishable from a windows AD server. It uses the exact same Windows-based tools and GUI for adding new users, groups and policies. It’s just slightly more complex to install. A new windows server license costs $1200 + $55 for each employee in the company. Put that money towards a Linux consultant paid $200/hour to install and configure it and it’s the same. 2/3 hours to setup and 1 hour per year for maintenance. And anyway the consultant that is paid to install and configure the windows based active directory server isn’t much cheaper, just easier to find.
Have you worked in a sysadmin position? Nextcloud and Samba aren’t really stable enough to use In a business as they both are a massive pain. You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to support them.
I agree that managing nextcloud for hundreds of users is a mess but in my example it just needs the shared space, not any specific plugin, that means it can be replaced by any other cloud solution like paying onlyoffice to do the managed hosting for you at $8/user and doing work chats with anything that’s not Microsoft teams
Btw I find Debian+smb4 as a “set and forget” solution that needs to just be checked once a year as it requires less troubleshooting than Windows server. Only exception when Microsoft a couple years ago forced a different encryption on Windows 11 and clients couldn’t login anymore. It was patched two years earlier but Debian is “stable” and didn’t get the patch. Otherwise can pay ucs2 for commercial support