Unfortunately, MS knows it’s a captive audience and enterprises aren’t rushing to exit Microsoft anytime soon so they continue to get away with it.
That is the traditional spin but if they pull many stunts like this how long will it continue? Corporate IT teams are infamous for being slow and unwieldy but that's not entirely fair because the corporate IT teams are usually also the ones on the hook if anything goes wrong. Screw up some sort of data protection or regulatory compliance issue and that can have serious and lasting implications for the entire business. Move fast and break things is not what you want when x% of your global turnover is at stake if a regulator decides to make an example of you. Letting anyone else play with your toys is definitely not what you want in that scenario - why else do Windows Enterprise and Education editions not try to force the same hostile measures onto their customers as all the lower tiers?
This looks like a huge misstep to me - the kind of mess that could actually be big enough to move the needle. And for Microsoft the greatest danger is probably the needle moving enough for everyone to see it. Once no-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft except for that guy who just did it really could be the beginning of the end for them.
Microsoft also seems to have just abandoned one of the most powerful brands ever - Office - in a move that I can only assume was intended to show that Musk wasn't actually the craziest PR guy in the world when he renamed Twitter. There seems to be an outbreak of delusional thinking in Redmond and if this stuff doesn't get backtracked quickly I don't see a happy ending for MS here.
Apple for hardware. Maybe a few orgs even try PCs running Linux as we've seen in some governments looking to save $$$.
Google or countless smaller but established services for all the online stuff. The days when all businesses used Windows and Office for everything and the competitors were half-baked also-rans are long gone.
There is no lack of IT companies that will take your money if you're willing to move out of the Microsoft bubble. This is a momentum problem not a lack of competition problem.
Apple hardware can work, so long as the business isn’t dependent on any legacy desktop windows stuff (but there’s always VMs or RDP in that case).
But it is still somewhat a competition problem. Google workspace has better collaboration/live editing IMO but still lacks in some areas. Microsoft’s compliance/DLP stuff is better, InTune while not the best has actually shaped up to be a pretty good MDM and works on all OSes both desktop and mobile (including Linux), and you get endpoint EDR bundled as well as zero trust VPN (global secure access).
Google has no answer to a big chunk of what locks big enterprise into M365, but workspace is fine for medium and smaller companies that don’t need all of what MS has.
But I think those smaller companies are where the disruption will start.
MS used to be legendary for its efforts to maintain backward compatibility. I think it has lost a lot of credibility after the way it has managed Windows forward compatibility and support recently though.
It is apparently scrambling to offer extended support schemes right now rather than deal with the inevitable fallout of forcibly retiring Windows 10 on so many still-functional devices with no upgrade path to 11 even available.
It hasn't been very long since it forcibly obsoleted the Windows 7/8 generations that were also still in use on a significant number of devices at the time but did not include the level of control (or intrusion if you prefer) that Microsoft evidently wanted of its users' devices.
The difference this time is that it's showing contempt for even large customers' control. Corporate IT departments with all those externally imposed constraints can resist compromise and surrendering control much more strongly than most home users or small organisations.
That is the traditional spin but if they pull many stunts like this how long will it continue? Corporate IT teams are infamous for being slow and unwieldy but that's not entirely fair because the corporate IT teams are usually also the ones on the hook if anything goes wrong. Screw up some sort of data protection or regulatory compliance issue and that can have serious and lasting implications for the entire business. Move fast and break things is not what you want when x% of your global turnover is at stake if a regulator decides to make an example of you. Letting anyone else play with your toys is definitely not what you want in that scenario - why else do Windows Enterprise and Education editions not try to force the same hostile measures onto their customers as all the lower tiers?
This looks like a huge misstep to me - the kind of mess that could actually be big enough to move the needle. And for Microsoft the greatest danger is probably the needle moving enough for everyone to see it. Once no-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft except for that guy who just did it really could be the beginning of the end for them.
Microsoft also seems to have just abandoned one of the most powerful brands ever - Office - in a move that I can only assume was intended to show that Musk wasn't actually the craziest PR guy in the world when he renamed Twitter. There seems to be an outbreak of delusional thinking in Redmond and if this stuff doesn't get backtracked quickly I don't see a happy ending for MS here.