Yeah, I skimmed the article too, but didn’t see much on Trump’s policies directly impacting Microsoft.
From what I gather, the bigger challenges for businesses are more about the tech ecosystem Microsoft has built. It's hard to just swap out core services like AD without huge disruptions.
Ah, that makes sense. I missed that detail on first read
Yeah, I can see how events like that raise real concerns for foreign governments relying on US-based infrastructure. Even if Microsoft isn’t directly doing anything aggressive, the potential for state pressure is enough to make countries want more control over their tech stack
Trump has been outrageously hostile to our supposed European allies, and is extremely petty, vindictive, and doesn’t give a damn about security or privacy. Furthermore, the checks that would normally provide counter this like congress or the Supreme Court are currently stacked such that he can do horrendous things without consequence. Our media and tech companies are also more than happy to avoid challenging him.
Other countries reliant on US based cloud giants are understandably alarmed at his behavior, and it is now a strong possibility that Trump will attempt to use their reliance on our tech companies to wring from them whatever he wants.
So the idea of escaping US tech monopolies has become very popular among those paying attention.
And the hardest part of it often ends up being "We can replace most of Microsoft's apps and services except one (and it's usually Excel) so we might as well just keep everything else."
Microsoft is king at "Good enough." It's rarely the best option of anything, but what they do put out is bundled aggressively and is generally "good enough."
So, you have a business where a large portion of the user base needs Excel. So you have licensing for that. Sure you can still use other services - you can use Okta instead of EntraID, some other MDM besides InTune, some other EDR besides Defender but once you have 1 product, why would you, when it's significantly cheaper (both in terms of actual cost per user per month and in terms of employing talent that can administer a MS ecosystem) to just go all in with Microsoft.
Because of the way Microsoft designed their suite of software and services, the only realistic choice is either all in on Microsoft, or no Microsoft at all, and to fix that we need antitrust action.
