Opinion: The arguments for Microsoft 365 are this bad
According to Microsoft, MS Office is impractical and too expensive – The M365 cloud is the future! Moritz Förster takes the adventurous argument apart.
(Image: IB Photography/Shutterstock.com)
The end is near: Microsoft is now officially putting its traditional Office on the back burner. It has been clear for some time that the company sees the future exclusively in its M365 suite –, but when it would start aggressively pushing its legion of corporate customers into the cloud was not. So now a court report study is underway to prove how worthwhile the switch would be for companies. Whether users will really save so much time, administrators will be relieved of so much work and the costs for software and hardware will fall so much is at least questionable.
It is outrageous that Microsoft speaks of "limitations" of the classic Office in the evaluation of the study, which users would increasingly notice. Are we talking about missing functions that developers could of course simply retrofit? No, but the Office programs would be stuck on the desktop, which would seriously affect productivity away from the office. It's obvious, who doesn't experience this on the train every day: hordes of people sitting desperately in front of their smartphones because they can't work on an Excel spreadsheet that is essential to their business. Only when they get back to their desktop PC can they get on with their real work. If only someone would invent a mobile computer.
What's more, according to Microsoft, you can't easily access your files on the move. Serious claim: Allegedly, the still uninvented laptop can't very well fetch files remotely from a central storage, because this is M365 cloud new territory. Moreover, it is said that remote communication with employees can only work properly with MS Teams – Chats? Email? Telephone? Oh yes, there was something ...
The monopoly cloud is always cheaper
But all this is just a prelude, because the crux of the matter is the supposedly ever-increasing cost of in-house IT. According to Microsoft, anyone who uses different providers for emails, storage and virtual meetings has to pay more. The most logical solution of all: Entrusting all of this to a single provider. Microsoft and its M365 cloud, for example. It is now also coming with AI, which will definitely make everything even cheaper. And if customers are trapped in the cloud monopoly without a realistic migration option, no one will ever not turn the price screw.
Finally, Microsoft comes up with a very subtle hint: Time is running out for old versions of Office. Versions 2016 and 2019 will continue to receive support until mid-October 2025. And after that, continued operation will be dangerous (by the way: M365 is always secure, source: Microsoft). The explosive fact is that a full 70 percent of German SMEs were still using one of these two versions at the end of 2024. That leaves Office 2021 and 2024 – The latter was considered a surprise by some when a classic package for "niche scenarios" came onto the market after all.
However, users should not get their hopes up too high for a successor to 2024, as Microsoft is only explicitly promising this for special LTSC editions. However, the company remains silent on the regular Office. Instead, Microsoft emphasizes that companies need to start thinking about the transition now. A good point. As the 2024 version does not expire until 2029, customers can plan several years for the switch – There are good alternatives, after all.
(fo)
