What Microsoft OS is best for business?
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@Carnival-Boy Yes, lots of companies actually use Libre and OpenOffice and for the SMB it is often the most expensive software that they have. It's not "that" expensive but enough that even extremely profitable companies with hundreds of employees freak out each and every time they re-up it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy Yes, lots of companies actually use Libre and OpenOffice and for the SMB it is often the most expensive software that they have. It's not "that" expensive but enough that even extremely profitable companies with hundreds of employees freak out each and every time they re-up it.
Exactly, what do you consider not expensive? Office Value License is the only thing that should be used in a 10+ user environment for management reasons alone. Office Pro Plus VL is $500+ with SA it's over $750 for three years. You could of course go with O365 Office Pro Plus for $12/user/month. If you're the type to always buy SA, then O365 Office Pro Plus is the best/cheapest way to go. If not, then buying at least a one time VL license is.
There are lower Office VL options, but I have no idea what the costs on them are.
At the above listed price, your at anywhere from 1/3 the cost of the PC to the same cost (someone just posted a Dell Optiplex for $500 the other day - damn a business class machine that cheap.. holy cow!)
SMBs only care about what they are putting out of pocket today, not over the life of the product/software/etc. If they did, they would realize Office is pretty cheap and they probably make a ton of money using it vs not using it.
But as Scott is about to mention, it's probably likely that many of those same business could get away with using a completely free product like LIbreOffice too. -
I agree that MS Office is often a good value. But how many SMBs consider $500 cheap? What else costs that much?
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A big difference in office suites is that at $500 you tend to worry about who should get a copy. With OpenOffice you just install for everyone.
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$500 / user is a lot if money. That is $50K for 100 users. That's likely bigger than the entire server room budget for that many people.
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It's certainly a concern now that H&B OEM licences are no longer available (see other thread). I used to just buy a licence with the PC and no-one cared about the cost. Simple and cheap.
I'm now torn between open licences or O365 being the way forward.
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What do OpenOffice users use for e-mail and calendering? Outlook is probably the killer app for us in terms of Office.
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What's your email back end? If it's Office 365, why not use OWA? Sure you can't any add-ons with it (that I know, who knows maybe you can), but if you don't use add-ons it's pretty close to the full outlook client.
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On-premise Exchange. To be honest, if you're on Office 365 I think it makes more sense to get Office with it. I believe it's only going to be an extra $90 a year on the new Business Premium plan.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
On-premise Exchange. To be honest, if you're on Office 365 I think it makes more sense to get Office with it. I believe it's only going to be an extra $90 a year on the new Business Premium plan.
Eh? The difference from E1 to E3 goes from $8 to $20 a month, or $144 more per user a year. This $144 is nearly the same price SMBs have been paying for a locally installed copy of H&B version for the last 4-6 years, and they only paid it once for the life of the PC. It's pretty obvious that MS has had a Major price shift in their SMB market pricing for this product for those who didn't care about SA.
Why would Office 365 encourage people more to purchase the locally installed version if they don't really need it?
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@Dashrender said:
Eh?
New plans are out in October which will effectively cut the cost of the Midsize business plan to $12.50 (now named Business Premium). This is what most SMBs will be getting. Yeah, it's still more than H&B, but that's no longer an option unless you're a tiny business. So the choice is $90 per year or LibreOffice. I'd take Office every time for that price.
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oh that's right I do recall someone posting here about that.
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@Dashrender part of the issue is that O365 pushes Pro Plus not the versions widely applicable to the SMB.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender part of the issue is that O365 pushes Pro Plus not the versions widely applicable to the SMB.
Exactly - it looks like the new Office Business (local install of Office plus web storage) will fit that area OK - though $99 year is still many more times than the cost those SMBs paid for H&B before. Assuming a life of the PC at 6 years, they're now paying ~$600 vs $149 before. Granted they get online storage space and the ability to install it on up to 5 devices, I'm not sure most SMBs are going to care about those features.
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I think that rather quickly even SMBs will start to see value in those things. It's become common for everyone to have multiple devices today. That's going to increase before it reduces again.
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The ability to install on multiple devices is quite a selling-point for many, along with the online storage. They can have shared data on multiple different devices, something most people would love for business application.
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Agrees. I think SMBs have the hardest learning curve but also the most to gain from the new storage options. That can really be a game changer.
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I think small businesses have a high percentage of single users with lots of company devices compared to larger companies. Big companies tend to just be like "here is your desktop" but smaller companies might give you lots of different technology or allow you to use more of your own.
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I must be in the wrong SMBs. Most that I've been with are avoiding the use of personal devices if at all possible.
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@Dashrender maybe you deal with people more interested is security than ease of use?
