Assessing Microsoft’s Progress in Education (Premium)

Two years ago, I sounded the alarm: Microsoft cannot afford to lose the education market to Google services and Chromebooks. Since then, the software giant has unleashed an impassioned effort to improve its education offerings and halt Google’s progress.

It started with the infamous education event in May 2017 at which Microsoft introduced Surface Laptop, a luxury MacBook Air competitor that has never, and will never, find a home in the cash-strapped education market. Introducing Surface Laptop at that event was really about launching Windows 10 S, an offering that was, to put it politely, ahead of its time. And while something like this may someday make sense for education---and for individuals and businesses, too---let’s just say it failed and move on.

The good news? Surface Laptop was Microsoft’s only education misstep over the past two years. And while outside forces like Chromebooks and even Apple’s uninspiring iPad education push may have their effect, it’s clear that Microsoft is taking all the right steps to win back this crucial market.

And let’s be clear: Education is crucial. If a generation of students grows up using Google services on Chromebooks, they will collectively expect to use those products when they enter the workforce, a seismic change that will forever impact the way that work gets done. And this isn’t a theory: For the past decade or more, businesses have been dealing with the so-called “consumerization of IT,” in which, yes, workers expect to have access, at work, to the same technologies they use at home.

That trend provides an interesting playbook for Microsoft---and its competitors---to follow in education. The reason people wish to use tech products and services like iPhones and Dropbox at work is because these things have proven themselves invaluable in their private lives. They like using these products. And they perceive that their lives are better in doing so.

Microsoft’s task, then, is to do likewise for its own products and services in education. And the audiences they are trying to appeal to are as obvious as they are diverse: They must work for school administrators, educators, and students, must be affordable, and they must be as good or better than what the competition offers.

And that’s problematic. Where Apple’s inept education strategy makes it a non-event, Google is doing to Microsoft now what Microsoft did to established players like IBM, Novell, Sun, and others in the 1990’s: It’s making simpler, less expensive, and more easily managed alternatives. And it is seeing great growth, in this case in education, as a result. Schools and other educational institutions don’t just use Chromebooks and Google services because they’re inexpensive---though that gets them into the conversation---it’s doing so because they work and are well-liked. The services are absolutely good enough, and Chromebooks are simple to use and, better, easy enough to manage th...