Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@IRJ said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
You will still need to buy IT labor to run it, but alot less labor than separate custom solutions and a somewhat predictable monthly bill for service and labor.
Sure, that later stage of the IT. But it takes way more IT skill and experience to evaluate products, services, approaches, alignment with needs, etc. than to operate a product. Especially one like O365 where there is loads of documentation and often SaaS behind the scenes doing a lot of the hard stuff.
To properly compare and think about costs, long term labor, lock in, formats, end user support, and all of the kinds of things that we have discussed... all of that should be stuff being considered before choices are made. And honestly, understanding it and putting it all together is much, much harder than logging into O365 and provisioning some users. That why one piece is a senior IT role and the other is often a helpdesk one (assuming helpdesk is roughly entry level in the org.)
This is what my original thread was about. Not outsourcing products or buying products. But rather making the decision of what to buy and/or do vs buying the decision of what to them buy and/or do.
So are you saying that for each customer you have you wan to manage their NextCloud instance, all their Linux machines and the syncing issues that might arise and not even counting the countless issues I encounter with people working with Libre Office or OpenOffice and their Java dependency.
So if you wanted to have an efficient setup you would use Office 365 to take care of the documents in Sharepoint (Centralized File Server if you would like to compare), Give the users their own One Drive with both Web and Local Office software and you wouldn't touch the server or the clients for updates unless they disable it. That would have also included OneNote to take notes, Teams to collaborate and so many other options. So That in itself makes a company spend less and actually if you want to do IT work for Microsoft or another cloud vendor and just do what you call "IT" Then go for it but lets not pretend that hosting your systems is cheaper and less problematic.
Likewise let's not pretend that Office 365 'just works' or requires a small amount of support. It's very trite to act like NextCloud is hard and has all these problems. I'm not fooled, I support customers on both and trust me, Office 365 is the one that makes me more money. Neither is problem free. IT is hard, it takes work. But all the acting like Office 365 is stable, safe, or easy.... lol. That's just crazy.
Let's see, just this week one customer had to hire someone to sit in their office and train them how to use it because the end user experience was too much to handle, one (very large) had to hire us to fix their hundreds of broken accounts, another (yesterday) brought us in because it was hacked and shut off on them, another paid us to fix their system at a registry level because their install was corrupt, another brought us in to fix their install because they had accidentally clicked on a link on Microsoft's own site and it corrupted their Office install and they couldn't get it back...
Sure, if I was only focused on how much money I could get from clients and didn't care about evaluating their needs, I could just push O365. It pays the IT bills like nobody's business. But I can't wear by IT hat and do good by my customers if I don't take into consideration that it generally costs them more to license OR support O365 than it costs to have us run something else for them. That's right BOTH parts cost more, in most cases. That doesn't mean that it isn't the right tool for a lot of customers, but I sure don't look the other way and pretend it's a solid, stable product just so that I can bill more hours. They pay me to tell them like it is and do a real evaluation.
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@dbeato remember internally we moved away from O365 because it was faster to build a new platform of our own and migrate than to wait while MS fixed an account outage. It was literally easier to get to something else than to stay. The cost savings was just a bonus (a big bonus.)
We were so glad, we had not realized how much unnecessary work and problems we were having being on O365. I feel like everyone that claims that it "just works" has stopped evaluating and just imagines that it is easier because they are paying so much that they are terrified to check if the emperor is really clothed or not.
We run NextCloud internally, and most of our customers are on O365. I can tell you, when it's MY money on the line, I'm not tempted, not one bit. I'd be a freaking idiot to move my own company to O365. Maybe people are comfortable doing it when it's other people's money, but how many people recommending it are also willing to put their money where their mouths are and pay for that for dozens of staffers out of their own pocket rather than just getting paid hourly for when things fail.
It's very, very different when you feel the pain of the licensing cost and the pain of the outages and the pain of the training, rather than benefiting from the extra work it generates.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
Well, that is also bad IT practice. The software is not longer supported, doesn't have any further security updates. The fact it has worked is great but the major Windows 10 Updates since 1703 with Office 2010 have been a pain.
Windows 10 Updates are huge pain for us unrelated to Office 2010.
I know most of you here will say that using Office 2010 is bad practice.
What would be good practice in our case?
Buy Office 2013. seven years ago, then Office 2016, now 2019 or move to O365 and spend additional money monthly?
Or leave MS Office completely which is most expensive for us (at least for now)?
(Online only is not acceptable for us)I don't see that we suffer from "bad practice" of not buying newer versions of Office
We do slowly move our Excel-VBA solutions to other solutions (custom apps...) but we do it when we make new versions of solutions, not just to move from Office ASAP -
@Mario-Jakovina said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
Well, that is also bad IT practice. The software is not longer supported, doesn't have any further security updates. The fact it has worked is great but the major Windows 10 Updates since 1703 with Office 2010 have been a pain.
Windows 10 Updates are huge pain for us unrelated to Office 2010.
I know most of you here will say that using Office 2010 is bad practice.
What would be good practice in our case?
Buy Office 2013. seven years ago, then Office 2016, now 2019 or move to O365 and spend additional money monthly?
Or leave MS Office completely which is most expensive for us (at least for now)?
(Online only is not acceptable for us)I don't see that we suffer from "bad practice" of not buying newer versions of Office
We do slowly move our Excel-VBA solutions to other solutions (custom apps...) but we do it when we make new versions of solutions, not just to move from Office ASAPThis might be out of the subject of the topic and can be forked if needed. However do you think running Windows XP is a security Risk? Do you think running Windows 7 is a security risk any longer? If the answer to both it also makes it the same for Office 2010 then with the end of life ending on 10/13/2020. That is 10 years of the software being supported.
The best practice would have been to move to the Office 365 plan that includes Office either the Microsoft 365 Apps (if you want only the application) or Office 365 Business Standard. That way your systems are updated throughout that whole period.
If you wanted to move away from Office you would have done so a while ago since a higher cost at the beginning of a migration is expected but the longer you run with a newer platform you probably would benefit of what your company is looking for and which is why they are looking for custom apps.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@IRJ said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
You will still need to buy IT labor to run it, but alot less labor than separate custom solutions and a somewhat predictable monthly bill for service and labor.
Sure, that later stage of the IT. But it takes way more IT skill and experience to evaluate products, services, approaches, alignment with needs, etc. than to operate a product. Especially one like O365 where there is loads of documentation and often SaaS behind the scenes doing a lot of the hard stuff.
To properly compare and think about costs, long term labor, lock in, formats, end user support, and all of the kinds of things that we have discussed... all of that should be stuff being considered before choices are made. And honestly, understanding it and putting it all together is much, much harder than logging into O365 and provisioning some users. That why one piece is a senior IT role and the other is often a helpdesk one (assuming helpdesk is roughly entry level in the org.)
This is what my original thread was about. Not outsourcing products or buying products. But rather making the decision of what to buy and/or do vs buying the decision of what to them buy and/or do.
So are you saying that for each customer you have you wan to manage their NextCloud instance, all their Linux machines and the syncing issues that might arise and not even counting the countless issues I encounter with people working with Libre Office or OpenOffice and their Java dependency.
So if you wanted to have an efficient setup you would use Office 365 to take care of the documents in Sharepoint (Centralized File Server if you would like to compare), Give the users their own One Drive with both Web and Local Office software and you wouldn't touch the server or the clients for updates unless they disable it. That would have also included OneNote to take notes, Teams to collaborate and so many other options. So That in itself makes a company spend less and actually if you want to do IT work for Microsoft or another cloud vendor and just do what you call "IT" Then go for it but lets not pretend that hosting your systems is cheaper and less problematic.
Likewise let's not pretend that Office 365 'just works' or requires a small amount of support. It's very trite to act like NextCloud is hard and has all these problems. I'm not fooled, I support customers on both and trust me, Office 365 is the one that makes me more money. Neither is problem free. IT is hard, it takes work. But all the acting like Office 365 is stable, safe, or easy.... lol. That's just crazy.
Let's see, just this week one customer had to hire someone to sit in their office and train them how to use it because the end user experience was too much to handle, one (very large) had to hire us to fix their hundreds of broken accounts, another (yesterday) brought us in because it was hacked and shut off on them, another paid us to fix their system at a registry level because their install was corrupt, another brought us in to fix their install because they had accidentally clicked on a link on Microsoft's own site and it corrupted their Office install and they couldn't get it back...
Sure, if I was only focused on how much money I could get from clients and didn't care about evaluating their needs, I could just push O365. It pays the IT bills like nobody's business. But I can't wear by IT hat and do good by my customers if I don't take into consideration that it generally costs them more to license OR support O365 than it costs to have us run something else for them. That's right BOTH parts cost more, in most cases. That doesn't mean that it isn't the right tool for a lot of customers, but I sure don't look the other way and pretend it's a solid, stable product just so that I can bill more hours. They pay me to tell them like it is and do a real evaluation.
I am going to say this and take it with a grain of salt, Office 365 and G-suite so far are the most straight forward systems I have found for end users without going through many hoops to get their devices configured, Data Imported, Exported and overall configuration. To do email migration it doesn't take me enormous amount of times.
All the majority of the issues you have mentioned are user errors which can and could have been easily remedied by the IT person or company prior to you. Any OS and Software has their bugs and we can sit here and discuss that but Linux and Mac have also their issues when it comes to dependency, hardware and other things so nothing is perfect for sure.
Users can and should use MFA to avoid Hacking but again they didn't listen. AD Connect should not be used unless really necessary (In the event of a hybrid environment or such) but I know I am not here to convince you since you lost trust from Microsoft.I can tell you that the Office 365 and G-Suite customers of mine are the ones we need to spend less time with them to configure or support them. They have had their outages but that is less than hosting their own Exchange or IMAP/POP Server in contrast. The custoemrs with internal Email Servers and File Servers require more management than Office 365 for sure as well.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
but how many people recommending it are also willing to put their money where their mouths are and pay for that for dozens of staffers out of their own pocket rather than just getting paid hourly for when things fail.
For the record our company is in Office 365 so I know what I am saying and money is not being wasted.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
I can tell you that the Office 365 and G-Suite customers of mine are the ones we need to spend less time with them to configure or support them. They have had their outages but that is less than hosting their own Exchange or IMAP/POP Server in contrast. The custoemrs with internal Email Servers and File Servers require more management than Office 365 for sure as well.
What services are you seeing that are requiring more time? Zoho? Zimbra? I've directly compared those two against O365. They are definitely way less time to support.
Another telling thing is.... when we get brought customers with disasters, it's always O365. Sure, they are the majority of the market, and certainly the absolute "go to" for shops that don't evaluate needs and just go for whatever has the most markup, so that's a big factor. But we see zero need for the kinds of regular recovery from any other service. It's a unique market saving people from O365 problems.
Of course, compared to just hosting Exchange, I expect it to be better. But I think we all know that that's a bad comparison, using "Exchange is so bad, that this better management of Exchange looks acceptable" is really highlighting just had hard it is to find an example of something less problematic than O365.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
This might be out of the subject of the topic and can be forked if needed. However do you think running Windows XP is a security Risk? Do you think running Windows 7 is a security risk any longer? If the answer to both it also makes it the same for Office 2010 then with the end of life ending on 10/13/2020. That is 10 years of the software being supported.
Keep in mind that XP and 7 are out of support, the one by a really long time. Office 2010 is just getting there. So similar, but not quite the same.
Also, the risks of Office code in the user space, rather than OS code in the admin space, is quite a different risk level.
And remember "a risk" is never a correct way to compare. Of course it's "a risk", the question is "how much risk, and how does that impact the business." If we only considered "a risk", obviously both Windows and MS Office would have never gotten on the table in the first place as both are "riskier" than Ubuntu and LO. But clearly, not risky enough to be a problem, just riskier. So we can't use "a risk" to determine these things, or even "more risk", but it has to be "X amount of risk, and what's our risk aversion."
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
I can tell you that the Office 365 and G-Suite customers of mine are the ones we need to spend less time with them to configure or support them. They have had their outages but that is less than hosting their own Exchange or IMAP/POP Server in contrast. The custoemrs with internal Email Servers and File Servers require more management than Office 365 for sure as well.
What services are you seeing that are requiring more time? Zoho? Zimbra? I've directly compared those two against O365. They are definitely way less time to support.
Another telling thing is.... when we get brought customers with disasters, it's always O365. Sure, they are the majority of the market, and certainly the absolute "go to" for shops that don't evaluate needs and just go for whatever has the most markup, so that's a big factor. But we see zero need for the kinds of regular recovery from any other service. It's a unique market saving people from O365 problems.
Of course, compared to just hosting Exchange, I expect it to be better. But I think we all know that that's a bad comparison, using "Exchange is so bad, that this better management of Exchange looks acceptable" is really highlighting just had hard it is to find an example of something less problematic than O365.
Services that require more time and upkeep, Dovecot/Mail/Exim/PostFix, Zimbra, mDaemon, Kerio Connect, Zentyal, Open-Xchange, for sure it is a pain in the but to maintain as well. Zoho not so much since it is also a cloud hosted service so that is no on the picture. I am talking about something you need to manage, upkeep and setup everything to manage the customer. Is almost a monopoly where the customer is being hold hostage to your upkeep. Anything that is cloud managed the customer can do 95% of the things without intervention of outsider management.
The amount of customers that we have rescued for those types of systems is greater than anything else and that is just about email. I can tell stories of File servers, Self-Hosted Apache Servers and so forth.
Exchange is not bad, most of the issues we find have to do with Autodiscover, Backups, Logs filling and so forth but not the functionality.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
This might be out of the subject of the topic and can be forked if needed. However do you think running Windows XP is a security Risk? Do you think running Windows 7 is a security risk any longer? If the answer to both it also makes it the same for Office 2010 then with the end of life ending on 10/13/2020. That is 10 years of the software being supported.
Keep in mind that XP and 7 are out of support, the one by a really long time. Office 2010 is just getting there. So similar, but not quite the same.
Also, the risks of Office code in the user space, rather than OS code in the admin space, is quite a different risk level.
And remember "a risk" is never a correct way to compare. Of course it's "a risk", the question is "how much risk, and how does that impact the business." If we only considered "a risk", obviously both Windows and MS Office would have never gotten on the table in the first place as both are "riskier" than Ubuntu and LO. But clearly, not risky enough to be a problem, just riskier. So we can't use "a risk" to determine these things, or even "more risk", but it has to be "X amount of risk, and what's our risk aversion."
I know why I said it, in IT you also have to plan and what I am saying is that in 2 months I doubt the whole company will just switch to newer Office without a plan. IT is also about planning and managing those migrations process ahead of time and not waiting until the last minute to just do a change.
So are you using that the risk of Office code is different? Why do you think people need training to deal with Phishing emails? Human involvement in things makes it for 90%+ of the issues that happen be it ransomware, loss of data, hacking and so forth.
You cannot be a responsible IT person and not consider risks and just dismiss it because that is just a minimal issue or maybe the OS is worst whatever your cup of Joe is. However Windows, Mac OS and any Linux Flavor have their own risks so for me it is about mitigating considering both the usability and risks.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
I can tell you that the Office 365 and G-Suite customers of mine are the ones we need to spend less time with them to configure or support them. They have had their outages but that is less than hosting their own Exchange or IMAP/POP Server in contrast. The custoemrs with internal Email Servers and File Servers require more management than Office 365 for sure as well.
What services are you seeing that are requiring more time? Zoho? Zimbra? I've directly compared those two against O365. They are definitely way less time to support.
Another telling thing is.... when we get brought customers with disasters, it's always O365. Sure, they are the majority of the market, and certainly the absolute "go to" for shops that don't evaluate needs and just go for whatever has the most markup, so that's a big factor. But we see zero need for the kinds of regular recovery from any other service. It's a unique market saving people from O365 problems.
Of course, compared to just hosting Exchange, I expect it to be better. But I think we all know that that's a bad comparison, using "Exchange is so bad, that this better management of Exchange looks acceptable" is really highlighting just had hard it is to find an example of something less problematic than O365.
I am talking about something you need to manage, upkeep and setup everything to manage the customer. Is almost a monopoly where the customer is being hold hostage to your upkeep.
Yes exactly.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
IT is also about planning and managing those migrations process ahead of time and not waiting until the last minute to just do a change.
Very good point and a good lesson to remember.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
So are you using that the risk of Office code is different? Why do you think people need training to deal with Phishing emails? Human involvement in things makes it for 90%+ of the issues that happen be it ransomware, loss of data, hacking and so forth.
The point being... an infection from Office is trivial compared to an infection of the OS. The degree to which damage can happen is different. It's still bad, but it's not the same level, unless IT has really messed up.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
You cannot be a responsible IT person and not consider risks and just dismiss it because that is just a minimal issue or maybe the OS is worst whatever your cup of Joe is.
Isn't that the point that I just made? I specifically pointed out that you had to actually consider the risk, not just lump them all the same.
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@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
However Windows, Mac OS and any Linux Flavor have their own risks so for me it is about mitigating considering both the usability and risks.
See, this is what I mean. Everything has risks. Risk evaluation involves evaluating how big and common the risks are, what they are likely to do, what the impact is.
If you just say "there is risk", all risk evaluation is useless. IT has to evaluate and consider the risks. Just saying that you have to be afraid of everything because everything has risks and treating it all the same is the same as completely ignoring it. "When everything is a risk, nothing is a risk."
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
So are you using that the risk of Office code is different? Why do you think people need training to deal with Phishing emails? Human involvement in things makes it for 90%+ of the issues that happen be it ransomware, loss of data, hacking and so forth.
The point being... an infection from Office is trivial compared to an infection of the OS. The degree to which damage can happen is different. It's still bad, but it's not the same level, unless IT has really messed up.
But office infections go to the OS level, it is not merely an Office solely infection. The office suite is just a vector same as PDFs and so forth.
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@scottalanmiller Yes, but in your case the way it looked to me is that you would consider Office 2010 to be perfectly fine and very little risk in 2020. For me it is a big risk the fact to be so behind.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
@dbeato said in Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals:
However Windows, Mac OS and any Linux Flavor have their own risks so for me it is about mitigating considering both the usability and risks.
See, this is what I mean. Everything has risks. Risk evaluation involves evaluating how big and common the risks are, what they are likely to do, what the impact is.
If you just say "there is risk", all risk evaluation is useless. IT has to evaluate and consider the risks. Just saying that you have to be afraid of everything because everything has risks and treating it all the same is the same as completely ignoring it. "When everything is a risk, nothing is a risk."
It is understand what you think but saying and doing are two different things. So yes, most things have risks and nothing is perfect but you action it on prevention and being proactive you do no leave it to chance.
