Just this morning, Microsoft announced its five-year-long tech partnership with Walmart, which will involve the retailer moving to Microsoft 365 and Azure. But as it turns out, Microsoft could be losing out on a big partner sometime soon.
According to a new report from The Information, Facebook is reportedly planning to switch from Microsoft’s Office 365 to Google’s G Suite. The social network giant previously used Google’s apps but moved to Microsoft’s Office 365 more than two years ago. Going forward, though, Facebook could be switching to Google’s G Suite apps.
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The main reason behind Facebook’s potential switch is not clear.
“We regularly evaluate a broad range of products and services for our enterprise IT needs. Microsoft has and will continue to be a valued partner for Facebook’s Enterprise Engineering organization as we deploy solutions to support the growing needs of our business,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
But here is the thing: Facebook employees are reportedly frustrated with Office 365. They have complained that the Office 365 apps are “slow and bloated”, with the macOS version of Office 365 being “difficult to use”. For Facebook, however, moving away from Microsoft’s solutions could be quite challenging — the transition could present a “significant technical undertaking” for the company due to many systems being heavily reliant on Microsoft’s services.
Facebook is still evaluating the potential reversal to Google’s apps, as the company may also move away from Dropbox to Google for cloud storage as well. If the deal does go through, it will only reportedly generate around $3 million a year for Google — though it could still be a huge blow to Microsoft, which has continued to use Facebook’s partnership to promote many of its cloud services, including Microsoft Graph.
skane2600
<p>Always consider the political angle. All the cool kids hate Microsoft even if they're too young to know why.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#293122"><em>In reply to BoItmanLives:</em></a></blockquote><p>I'm not a fan of Windows 10 forced upgrade or Windows 8 (although at least 8 was more a self-inflected problem), but the anti-MS attitude was around long before those issues (don't they teach it at university?). And I have to agree with ecumenical that most people young and old never owned a Windows smartphone. </p>