The integration is Microsoft’s monopoly behaviour which anti-trust organisation no longer put a stop to. There are alternatives but they struggle to match the level of integration Microsoft can achieve owning and making all of the office suite.
However European local and regional government have been moving over to Office alternatives such as Collabora, Onlyoffice and Libreoffice. Collabora & Onlyoffice are particularly designed for online use and collaboration.
There are also alternatives to the Exchange email system, with Nextcloud one of a few that can either be bought as a service or self deployed by organisations and individuals.
The biggest benefits are total control and privacy of data, plus better cost. Microsoft clients don’t generally get any of this, with the increasing push to integrate online services and try to forcably up-sell by bundling in stuff customers don’t need but have to buy to get the things they want or need. Microsoft rely on inertia and vendor lock-in; once you become dependent on their services it makes it seem impossible to get out and move to a new system.
![Microsoft is is bed with Google now, in a worse, more OS-integrated way than Mozilla was [in bed with Google]. This timeline sucks.](https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/773d3464-6a91-414d-8ef7-3f56139f5faa.jpeg){kind=link}
The integration is Microsoft’s monopoly behaviour which anti-trust organisation no longer put a stop to. There are alternatives but they struggle to match the level of integration Microsoft can achieve owning and making all of the office suite.
However European local and regional government have been moving over to Office alternatives such as Collabora, Onlyoffice and Libreoffice. Collabora & Onlyoffice are particularly designed for online use and collaboration.
There are also alternatives to the Exchange email system, with Nextcloud one of a few that can either be bought as a service or self deployed by organisations and individuals.
The biggest benefits are total control and privacy of data, plus better cost. Microsoft clients don’t generally get any of this, with the increasing push to integrate online services and try to forcably up-sell by bundling in stuff customers don’t need but have to buy to get the things they want or need. Microsoft rely on inertia and vendor lock-in; once you become dependent on their services it makes it seem impossible to get out and move to a new system.