MS Rolling Out New Office 365 Small and Mid-Size Business Plans

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Beginning the first of this month, Microsoft began to roll out its new plans for Microsoft Office 365. The three new plans are Business Essentials, Business and Premium, all with new pricing guidelines.

Brand-new Office 365 customers can buy these plans now. For existing Office 365 SMB customers, Micorsoft is planning to move users during the next year (or so) from the current Office 365 plans.
Click to expand...
 
Budzman said:
Do people really pay for Office?
Click to expand...

I pay for an Office subscription. Every person tied to it gets 1TB of OneDrive storage and an Office Installation. Perfect for the Family IT guy. I can manage users from my account.
 
Is this the usual "We have new plans to serve you better" that are actually price hikes in disguise trick?
 
TechLarry said:
Is this the usual "We have new plans to serve you better" that are actually price hikes in disguise trick?
Click to expand...

With all of the bumbling and fumbling that Microsoft has gone through with its mobile business and the issues around Windows 8 its easy to forget that they also have some solid success in other areas. The software subscriptions and the cloud aren't very popular around here but in the marketplace Microsoft has done extremely well with Office 365 and Azure. Microsoft's success in these areas is probably why Satya Nadella become Microsoft's CEO as he was the head the cloud division before his promotion.

Microsoft may never become a major player in the phone and tablet market on the client OS side. But it is a very strong position to do well with cloud services and subscription apps in mobile.
 
Paid $299 for office 2007. Still serves my needs just fine. Works out to $42/year. Plus I can see myself using it for another 3 years+, at that point it would work out to $30/year. Unless MS can beat, not meet that price per year I won't even consider it. Bottom line, I'm concerned with meeting my needs at the lowest total cost of ownership. From the looks of it MS can go pound sand if they think I'm going to double my annual costs with their *lowest* package.
 
canna said:
Paid $299 for office 2007. Still serves my needs just fine. Works out to $42/year. Plus I can see myself using it for another 3 years+, at that point it would work out to $30/year. Unless MS can beat, not meet that price per year I won't even consider it. Bottom line, I'm concerned with meeting my needs at the lowest total cost of ownership. From the looks of it MS can go pound sand if they think I'm going to double my annual costs with their *lowest* package.
Click to expand...

The way I see the math is that if one is going to use Office constantly for a number years, Office 365 works out to be about the same as constant single PC upgrades, with the benefit of having options of multiple installs across multiple platforms.
 
heatlesssun said:
The way I see the math is that if one is going to use Office constantly for a number years, Office 365 works out to be about the same as constant single PC upgrades, with the benefit of having options of multiple installs across multiple platforms.
Click to expand...

This right here is the MF'n truth. Between a Macbook, a PC laptop, and a desktop..it ends up being cheaper just to pay a single subscription that can be used on multiple platforms and 3 computers. The free services/software out there just don't cut it for my needs. Otherwise I'd be using those instead of paying for Office.
 
450 said:
Why wouldn't they?
Click to expand...
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.

MS's stated goal is to make PC software subscription-based: just like a cable TV subscription. Those who don't fork over extortion money to MS every year or month are cut off, converting PCs into nifty doorstops. Exactly like your TV when you don't pay your cable bill.
 
Budzman said:
Do people really pay for Office?
Click to expand...

These plans are designed for businesses, so yes.. people really pay for office.

These plans are more affordable and easier to manage then retail boxes or volume licenses for Office 2013.
 
JeffDC said:
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.

MS's stated goal is to make PC software subscription-based: just like a cable TV subscription. Those who don't fork over extortion money to MS every year or month are cut off, converting PCs into nifty doorstops. Exactly like your TV when you don't pay your cable bill.
Click to expand...

Open office is a joke when it comes to real work. And you can still buy a full subscription free version of Office if you want.
 
JeffDC said:
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any evidence of that. I've used Open Office here and there for over a decade but it still doesn't come close to being a global standard. Besides, even at $100-400/user, Office isn't that expensive as far as business software goes - especially considering how versatile it is.
 
JeffDC said:
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.

MS's stated goal is to make PC software subscription-based: just like a cable TV subscription. Those who don't fork over extortion money to MS every year or month are cut off, converting PCs into nifty doorstops. Exactly like your TV when you don't pay your cable bill.
Click to expand...

Open Office is GARBAGE. I've messed around with it for the better part of a decade and it's still seriously lacking. There is a reason it's free and you get what you pay for.
 
450 said:
I haven't seen any evidence of that. I've used Open Office here and there for over a decade but it still doesn't come close to being a global standard. Besides, even at $100-400/user, Office isn't that expensive as far as business software goes - especially considering how versatile it is.
Click to expand...
IMO it's well beyond the realm of sanity to voluntarily pay for something that has always been and should be purchased just once. MS managed to sell one OS as five different "products" in the 9x/ME series, and another single OS as four different "products" in the NT line. But not even that was good enough for them, now they're trying to justify flipping yearly or monthly subscription fees in order to access a word processor.

Also if you're going to take swipes at Open Office at least cite a few examples. Last I heard thousands if not millions of businesses are running just fine on it, imo it will likely be the eventual major mail in Office's coffin, unless Nadella et al change their product and support policies, and this ridiculous subscription nonsense. What better (or at this point, other) way can they possibly leverage their 90% monopoly (or stranglehold, depending on which country you ask) on the world's desktops?

Example #527 imo of why future historians will simply stare in astonished wonder at what they're reading.
 
JeffDC said:
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.

MS's stated goal is to make PC software subscription-based: just like a cable TV subscription. Those who don't fork over extortion money to MS every year or month are cut off, converting PCs into nifty doorstops. Exactly like your TV when you don't pay your cable bill.
Click to expand...

It's obvious you have no experience in business IT needs if you think that OpenOffice is suitable for anything more than the simplest of businesses.

When OpenOffice Calc, for example, gets the ability to pull down 1,000,000+ sales and sales line item records in real-time via ODBC from our ERP, organize them into a pivot-table and then display KPIs through PowerPivot, then I will consider it. Until then, it is not of much use to me.
 
JeffDC said:
IMO it's well beyond the realm of sanity to voluntarily pay for something that has always been and should be purchased just once.
Click to expand...

And it's well beyond business viability to sell something once and have to upgrade and support it forever. The thing about Office is that it costs very little in relation to what that value of its artifacts are. Saving $100 a year for a copy of Office is meaningless to the customers I supported that spend their lives working in Excel. I'm currently working on a web site enhancement that's automating a financial model that some MBAs have been working on for a couple of months. The value of the single Excel document and the cost of the labor that when into is many, many times more than the cost of Office for these employees.

And I'm not saying that other spreadsheet apps couldn't do the job. But the savings would be meaningless versus any issues users would have in using other office automation software. It's for this reason why Office continues to dominate in the enterprise and will for the foreseeable future. For all of the mistakes that Microsoft has made in recent years with Windows, Xbox and the mobile OS space, that's simply not been the case with Office. Microsoft's overall execution here has been damned near flawless.
 
All good with Calc except for the one step (PowerPivot) handled by proprietary MS software.
 
heatlesssun said:
And it's well beyond business viability to sell something once and have to upgrade and support it forever.
Click to expand...
Not forever, but give us a break. Do you believe MS was justified in selling the Win95 kernel as five different operating systems? Are we supposed to be happy it wasn't 10 or 20 different "products"? Wait, here's the ultimate: new releases every month, week or day, access to all of which is cut off the instant your subscription check bounces.

Good God the gullibility.
 
JeffDC said:
Not forever, but give us a break. Do you believe MS was justified in selling the Win95 kernel as five different operating systems?
Click to expand...

You act as though every time there's a new version of Windows, people go out and buy upgrades. The reality is that the vast majority of PCs NEVER get an OS upgrade. They run the same OS they came with until they go out of service.

JeffDC said:
Are we supposed to be happy it wasn't 10 or 20 different "products"? Wait, here's the ultimate: new releases every month, week or day, access to all of which is cut off the instant your subscription check bounces.

Good God the gullibility.
Click to expand...

If one doesn't like the subscription model, there's still the stand alone single install of Office which can go for a little as $10 for students and employees of some companies that are good customers of Microsoft, which is a lot of them. There's free web versions also.

People are always claiming that Microsoft doesn't listen to customers. It's hard to see where they aren't listening to customers on Office 365 as it seems to be proving to be quite popular with customers.

And in any case there's always free alternatives as you pointed out with Open Office. But again, the money that's potentially saved by these free products is extremely small compared to the overall cost of the work products produced in Office for many professionals. This is the thing that FOSS people seem to not get. It's often not the attainment costs of software where the big expense is, but everything else. Being free is simply not enough when compared the enormous amount of time professionals put into Office across the world everyday.
 
canna said:
Paid $299 for office 2007. Still serves my needs just fine. Works out to $42/year. Plus I can see myself using it for another 3 years+, at that point it would work out to $30/year. Unless MS can beat, not meet that price per year I won't even consider it. Bottom line, I'm concerned with meeting my needs at the lowest total cost of ownership. From the looks of it MS can go pound sand if they think I'm going to double my annual costs with their *lowest* package.
Click to expand...

But you are also assuming that the only thing everyone wants is just office. For $10 a month ($99 a year) you get access to Office on 5 devices, along with your phone, 1TB of space for 5 users, and 60 minutes of Skype world minutes a month. If you just needed one account, its $69 a year.

Even Google can't even touch that. Google Drive is good, but it isn't office, and most people don't care about unlimited picture storage, nor would they understand how to make sure their pictures are small enough to apply.

If i'm in the market for storage, you might as well get Office for free. And if I'm a business already paying for software assurance, it's very tempting to let them handle exchange, since it's basically is the same price.
 
heatlesssun said:
You act as though every time there's a new version of Windows, people go out and buy upgrades. The reality is that the vast majority of PCs NEVER get an OS upgrade. They run the same OS they came with until they go out of service.
Click to expand...
Please can we agree to disagree on this issue. I routinely still run into Win98/SE machines and it's been 10+ years since I've run into a Win95OSR1 machine. 'Nuff said about it imo.

My actual issue is MS's decision to license a generic OS per machine, and I'm still waiting for an explanation from anyone of why MS was justified in changing its licensing policy, and implementing WPA/copy protection etc, only after Windows had acquired its essential monopoly on the world's desktops. In 12+ years the two answers offered have been "Because they could" and "Because they're greedy", as long as something more substantive isn't offered I see no reason they should be allowed holding the world hostage every time it buys a new configured PC.
 
JeffDC said:
My actual issue is MS's decision to license a generic OS per machine, and I'm still waiting for an explanation from anyone of why MS was justified in changing its licensing policy, and implementing WPA/copy protection etc, only after Windows had acquired its essential monopoly on the world's desktops. In 12+ years the two answers offered have been "Because they could" and "Because they're greedy", as long as something more substantive isn't offered I see no reason they should be allowed holding the world hostage every time it buys a new configured PC.
Click to expand...

The policy didn't change with WPA. OEM copies of Windows have always been tied to the machine they came with, you never allowed to move OEM copies of Windows to another machine. Sure, WPA made it harder for casual copying and of course part of the reason for adding it was profit driven. But it was also added to help deal with counterfeiting as well, and over the years I imagine a good amount of coin has been made from people selling pirated copies of Windows.

I get it. There are just those that don't like the idea of at cost software. It has long been the battle cry of the many in the Linux/FOSS community. But no matter what, it takes resources to develop complex software and it has to be paid for somehow. Either you sell directly or make money off hardware, support, ads, financially leverage personal information or do crowd funding.
 
heatlesssun said:
The policy didn't change with WPA. OEM copies of Windows have always been tied to the machine they came with, you never allowed to move OEM copies of Windows to another machine. Sure, WPA made it harder for casual copying and of course part of the reason for adding it was profit driven. But it was also added to help deal with counterfeiting as well, and over the years I imagine a good amount of coin has been made from people selling pirated copies of Windows.
Click to expand...
There's no need for or point to a black market at all for software unless it's copy protected.

Also to date I have never seen a "counterfeit" copy of Windows, just unlicensed. I'm not saying they don't exist.
 
JeffDC said:
There's no need for or point to a black market at all for software unless it's copy protected.
Click to expand...

But it's copy protected because it's not free which I believe is the underlying issue that you have with Windows and Office. Fair enough, it's obviously something that people have complained about for years and why they are supportive of FOSS. I don't think it's a zero sum situation, I think there's places in the world for different types of monetization and distribution models. And free software has put pressure on commercial software like Windows and Office to do things differently and at lower cost. However if there is no direct way for companies to make money from their products they have to find alternate revenue streams. There's no way for products like Windows and Office can be done completely for free.

JeffDC said:
Also to date I have never seen a "counterfeit" copy of Windows, just unlicensed. I'm not saying they don't exist.
Click to expand...

It exists, it's been a big problem in China where software counterfeiting is pervasive.
 
heatlesssun said:
But it's copy protected because it's not free which I believe is the underlying issue that you have with Windows and Office. Fair enough, it's obviously something that people have complained about for years and why they are supportive of FOSS. I don't think it's a zero sum situation, I think there's places in the world for different types of monetization and distribution models. And free software has put pressure on commercial software like Windows and Office to do things differently and at lower cost. However if there is no direct way for companies to make money from their products they have to find alternate revenue streams. There's no way for products like Windows and Office can be done completely for free.
Click to expand...
I'd never suggest such a thing. What the company can and should do imo is treat the market fairly: stop pawning off every minor update as a completely new product, stop forcing customers to get their permission whenever they need or decide to reinstall or move their operating system, stop creating artificially short product lifespans by mandating specific Windows versions on new PCs, and finally stop with this outright delusion that PCs ever can or should be anything like TV sets. I evidence this claim with Win8 and the market's response to it.
 
JeffDC said:
I'd never suggest such a thing. What the company can and should do imo is treat the market fairly: stop pawning off every minor update as a completely new product, stop forcing customers to get their permission whenever they need or decide to reinstall or move their operating system, stop creating artificially short product lifespans by mandating specific Windows versions on new PCs, and finally stop with this outright delusion that PCs ever can or should be anything like TV sets. I evidence this claim with Win8 and the market's response to it.
Click to expand...

I don't think all of this is fair. Windows versions get a pretty healthy support timeline, 5 years of mainstream support and 10 years extended. I'm not even sure what you mean by every minor update being a new version. 8 got 1 pretty major and 1 pretty minor update for free. I do see a valid point in letting older versions of Windows being more available and we obviously know of the issues that 8 had with the new UI.

That said about 8, integrating more consumer friendly features like an curated app store, tighter cloud integration, tablets and touch aren't really an option if Windows is to have any consumer future. When people sign into a phone or tablet it all gets setup, apps, playlists, email, etc. Those types of things HAVE to exist on PCs as well. But there are better ways than others to do things. Clearly Windows 8 was better example of a wrong way than right way to go about these things.

I don't see how having things like a Netflix or Hulu or WatchESPN apps is a bad thing if those apps can work well on a desktop and on a tablet. One thing that I've looked at lot at in 10 are how well modern apps work windowed. It does breath some new life into Windows for consumers using traditional keyboard and mouse devices.
 
JeffDC said:
Also to date I have never seen a "counterfeit" copy of Windows, just unlicensed. I'm not saying they don't exist.
Click to expand...

You may have dealt with them and didn't know. There was a significant wholesaler in the Atlanta area that sold to local stores, and they were busted for selling counterfeit versions of windows. The discs had the hologram, and authenticated.

And for that matter, if it wasn't for authentication, I know plenty of shops that had no problem with installing the same copy of windows on every computer they sold. The first PC I purchased from a local shop had a pirated copy of 3.1, and a shop I worked at all ran cracked versions on machines in house. He would have put it on machines he sold too if we didn't convince him otherwise.
 
Open Office or Libre Office is good enough for home or home business.


OTOH, Microsoft is offering Office online for free if you don't mind the cloud.
 
JeffDC said:
All good with Calc except for the one step (PowerPivot) handled by proprietary MS software.
Click to expand...

And Calc has nothing equivalent to PowerPivot. The fact that it is proprietary is irrelevant because I am interested in the functionality, not the brand name or specific piece of software. OpenOffice has very little in the way of BI features.

That's before you even get to things like Outlook and Sharepoint.
 
Ryokurin said:
You may have dealt with them and didn't know. There was a significant wholesaler in the Atlanta area that sold to local stores, and they were busted for selling counterfeit versions of windows. The discs had the hologram, and authenticated.

And for that matter, if it wasn't for authentication, I know plenty of shops that had no problem with installing the same copy of windows on every computer they sold. The first PC I purchased from a local shop had a pirated copy of 3.1, and a shop I worked at all ran cracked versions on machines in house. He would have put it on machines he sold too if we didn't convince him otherwise.
Click to expand...
Did he ever call MS for technical support on his company systems? If so, what did they say about his workstation licenses?

The justification for MS to charge per-end-user-machine for their software, like any other developer, should be limited to sales that mandate end-user support of that system. I'm mystified by peoples' apparent inability to understand MS has no legal obligation for end-user support of OEM licenses, yet still charges per machine for it. The only two responses I've gotten to this question in the last 12 years have been "because they can" and "because they're greedy".
 
JeffDC said:
Did he ever call MS for technical support on his company systems? If so, what did they say about his workstation licenses?

The justification for MS to charge per-end-user-machine for their software, like any other developer, should be limited to sales that mandate end-user support of that system. I'm mystified by peoples' apparent inability to understand MS has no legal obligation for end-user support of OEM licenses, yet still charges per machine for it. The only two responses I've gotten to this question in the last 12 years have been "because they can" and "because they're greedy".
Click to expand...

Here's the more notable cost. How much does it take to run Windows on an annual basis. From marketing to development to support costs? That's somewhere in the billions of dollars range certainly. And like most things, they cost what the market will bear.
 
Im in the process of "possibly" migrating a company to office 365. Def some ups and downs compared to hosting ones own exchange.

Also, Ive tried open office... lol comparing it to M$ is like comparing gimp to Photoshop.
 
heatlesssun said:
Here's the more notable cost. How much does it take to run Windows on an annual basis. From marketing to development to support costs? That's somewhere in the billions of dollars range certainly. And like most things, they cost what the market will bear.
Click to expand...
Can someone please post a net worth chart for MS's current and former executives. Just offhand I know Ballmer is >$15B, Gates well over $75B.

At what point can we stop shedding tears for MS's operating expenses?
 
JeffDC said:
At what point can we stop shedding tears for MS's operating expenses?
Click to expand...

So Microsoft has been able to generate a lot of wealth through its software licensing model. Who is supposed to be the judge then of how much many they or anyone else is supposed to be able to make then?

This argument has been around a long time and clearly Microsoft has generated a lot of resentment selling something for a lot of profit that some think should be free. I think one of the big miscalculations that the Linux community made in the 90s as desktop Linux was generating lots of buzz while Microsoft was going through its big anti-trust battles is that while free is great, it's not everything.

If free desktop Linux could support all of everyone's hardware and software as well or better than Windows and the transition was pretty easy, then we'd all be running free desktop Linux. Focusing solely on the attainment costs means nothing when there's so many other factors to deal with.
 
heatlesssun said:
So Microsoft has been able to generate a lot of wealth through its software licensing model. Who is supposed to be the judge then of how much many they or anyone else is supposed to be able to make then?
Click to expand...
History will be the judge, imo it won't be kind. What you call wealth is extortion money in light of MS's 90% monopoly position on the world's desktops.
 
JeffDC said:
History will be the judge, imo it won't be kind. What you call wealth is extortion money in light of MS's 90% monopoly position on the world's desktops.
Click to expand...

So because Microsoft can license at cost software in spite of the fact that there's been free alternatives to those products for years, it's extortion because Microsoft doesn't give it away for free or at some price level you think is justified? History doesn't judge sore losers well either.
 
These new plans still don't do anything for me. They still cost more than just buying the software. Make the small business plan $50/user /year, done. Get rid of the essentials its stupid, who wants to pay $60 / year just to get email? And even for those that do why give them incentive to ditch MS and use a free Office suite in combination? Once they go with a free office suite why don't they just use free email etc too?

Office 365 is an amazing applications suite I subscribe and love it but the business plans are just way to expensive. when the same business could buy the family pack and install on 5 machines for $100 / year. That comes out to $20 / user and all they lose is lync. MS has long wrestled with the conflict of interest in pricing and its going to start effecting them now that android and ios are major competitors. They need to addict people to their software not give them stupid plans that actually encourage them to find a loophole and wean themselves off MS software.
 
JeffDC said:
Open office? If it's not the new global standard it soon will be.

MS's stated goal is to make PC software subscription-based: just like a cable TV subscription. Those who don't fork over extortion money to MS every year or month are cut off, converting PCs into nifty doorstops. Exactly like your TV when you don't pay your cable bill.
Click to expand...

LOL open office is a piece of shit. Installed it on 2 Lenovo T400/T420 laptops and they both started crashing with blue screens until it was removed. These laptops both had fresh/updated win7 installs as well. It's funny you think it will be the new global standard...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top