Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

Microsoft will kill Office Online Server next year, creating a headache for anyone using on-premises Office web applications and the beleaguered holdouts sticking with Skype for Business Server. The retirement is scheduled for December 31, 2026. After this, there won't be any more security fixes, updates, or technical support …

[Eye Know]

I had not heard of it

I had not heard of it, but it sounds like half of the functionality of NextCloud AIO, there's your upgrade path for on-prem.

[katrinab]

Re: I had not heard of it

Do you still need to integrate that with an office app, which could be Collabora (LibreOffice), Only Office, or Office Online Server.

[NoneSuch]

Re: I had not heard of it

We moved to LibreOffice a while back. If it can't do it, we don't want to do it.

[Reginald O.]

Re: I had not heard of it

Libre is really a good product for most routine personal and business needs. Not sure why it's not dominating the office app industry.

[Doctor Syntax]

Just in time for non-USian businesses starting to fret about data sovereignty.

[ABugNamedJune]

It's gonna crash sometime

I think with the recent AWS outage, and the fair number of Cloudflare outages that have thrown the internet into turmoil over the past year, the shift to move everything into the cloud is insane. I know it's a ridiculous proposition to ask the question "what if Microsoft goes out of business tomorrow?" but it feels less ridiculous every day. We've had huge shakeups in the past, and with Meta dumping 600 of their AI staffers, I can't help but feel like the looming bubble will burst, throwing the tech landscape for another loop.

Once upon a time I was in favor of cloud services, it made sense when tech companies were boasting about their thousand nines availability, but cloud infrastructure is crumbling, and now that VC firms are expecting a payout, the gravel foundations so much enterprise infrastructure sits on is turning to sand as Microsoft and Amazon and the other techopolies start squeezing resources and customers to get the most value.

[Peter2]

Re: It's gonna crash sometime

I don't think it's so much about "What if Microsoft goes out of business".

Trump sanctioned a judge in the International Court of Justice because he didn't like their rulings and suddenly their emails and documents (like court case files) vanished out of the cloud. If he's willing to target a judge in the International Court of Justice then he's going to think about it rather less when going for somebody else.

That personally makes me look at the cloud and increasingly unstable political situation in America very pensively. It's now entirely plausible that Trump may wake up one morning not having taken his meds and decide that industry X in country Y is now sanctioned resulting in our IT vanishing, and the company collapsing when the cloud backups don't work either. He's done basically that with tarrifs already, even to countries that were previously American friends and allies.

Migrating to an American cloud without considering this sort of issue would now be somewhat negligent.

[rmullen0]

Re: It's gonna crash sometime

Yes, that is exactly the problem. You say the wrong thing and you get the Internet death penalty and have your accounts closed. What would happen if Microsoft disabled your email account tomorrow? Could you even get a hold of someone for support? It is insanity how everyone is reliant on these companies for something as critical as email.

[Reginald O.]

Re: It's gonna crash sometime

Once "they" get a certain percentage of users into the cloud, the price will really start to climb. If nothing else people and businesses ought to run their own parallel internal "cloud". I think they would find, if done right, it would be safe, reliable and at much less cost.

[hx]

The Great Oops

Having read the postmortem for the AWS issue, it's pretty clear that like all large, complex systems, there are enough unknown unknowns that any assurances that something is "impossible" are really just wishful thinking. At some point there will be an incident where one of the major cloud providers deletes all customer data in one single operation, or at least makes it unrecoverable.

It's the sort of thing that push a man towards restoring old steam-powered tractors and machinery.

[rmullen0]

Re: It's gonna crash sometime

I always thought cloud was nuts, and still do. The oligarchs just want you to rent and not own anything. It is the same for everything else in society. It is what you call techo-feudalism.

[MachDiamond]

Go online and take the risk

Any software that you don't run or host yourself is subject to vanishing. I'd never do something as sensitive as accounting online and there's no point for office applications. My accounting software is so old I have to run it on a vintage Mac Mini, but it does everything I need, I have years of data wrapped up in it and I don't have payroll so updates aren't needed. I have another $30 Mac Mini on the shelf should it fail. It also runs headless along with backing up email functionality. I could still do the basics of business if I had a break-in and my other computers were nicked. The Mini is bolted up and out of the way where it's not easy to find mostly to get it out of the way, but the security aspect is good too.

[original_rwg]

Get thee to 365

365 Bwah ha ha ha

[Roland6]

Re: Get thee to 365

Well given past performance, expect MS to announce the release of …

Microsoft 365 Local Office Online Server

Obviously, this requires both an Azure Local and 365 subscription…

[original_rwg]

365... Bwah ha ha ha...

[IGotOut]

Well...

...that's a year to get rid of Microsoft.

[Blackjack]

How much for the Offline Microsoft Office version anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

TPB is your friend ;-)

[snee]

massgrave.dev

[Anonymous Coward]

Softmaker office suite is one answer.

It's good and it's affordable. And multiplatform

They are trying to push a cloud based version, but a locally installed one is available:

https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office/order-all

[blu3b3rry]

After a recommendation on here last week I've been trying out Softmaker Freeoffice, mostly for a few spreadsheets so far.

So far it seems to run better than Libreoffice on my elderly HP Elitebook and definitely feels far less bloated than Excel.

Doesn't seem to play perfectly with some of the more niche MS additions to spreadsheets (one of my colleagues has developed a habit of stuffing the drop-down menus into their work) but then again I'm yet to find anything that'll handle those well.

[Charlie Clark]

OnlyOffice is a free altenative if you want MS Office compatibility and can do without most of the functions you never used anyway.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I do like Softmaker Office, it looks good and has 100% of features most people need.

What I would like is a version that works on a Chromebook, as that's what I use when I'm out of the house...

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I asked the question, and Softmaker got back to me.

It's possible to deploy their subscription based Softmaker NX on a Chromebook using the Linux subsystem.

Something for me to play with during Half Term I think...

[Too old for this sh*t]

typo...

"modernizing productivity experiences" should read monetizing productivity experiences

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: typo...

Why the joke alert?

[Scotech]

Re: typo...

I'd guess because it's ironic, given MS Office in various guises has been attempting to 'monetise productivity experiences' since 1990, with the slight problem that their products tend to get in the way of 'productivity' about as much as they facilitate it. I'm still struggling to adapt to the recent rework of Outlook, which seems to have basically been rebuilt to unify the code base of the desktop and online versions, but broke Microsoft's generally reliable approach towards backwards compatibility. They seem to be heading the direction of Google when it comes to the reliability and lifespan of their services - a big chunk of which is thanks to the shift to cloudiness.

[ChrisElvidge]

Microsoft's solution is a move to Teams, which the company says "offers modern meeting experiences."

Up and down like a bride's nightie?

[ComicalEngineer]

Skype was bad enough, Teams is even worse.

One of my clients now uses Apple FaceTime instead of Teams for smaller online meetings. Most of their staff have iphones and quite a few have ipads so it works quite well.

[Tim99]

Numbers and Pages aren’t bad. Numbers has a few inconsistencies with Excel: No field locking (but you can have multiple tables on a sheet, and lock individual tables); the colours on conditional formatting don’t always match up; and the order/application of multiple rules can be different. Cell formulae are generally compatible, and I make a point of not using macros. These days I usually prototype with Numbers, and then export to Excel if it is needed in that format - typically takes a few minutes to tidy up. Still a lot faster for me than doing it in Excel.

Pages doesn’t like tables within tables, and the default fonts often won’t line up with what is du jour for Word. One thing to be aware of is that the Apple files are considerably larger, possibly because they contain within themselves everything needed to recreate them, zipping only gives a small size reduction.

[wstrainer]

Lot of people may not of heard of it but I can tell you it is being used. Especially in AirGapped solutions that require no and enforce no connection to the internet, total on-prem. I worked on a project with colleagues to implement this and other things, I was the SharePoint guy, another Skype, another Exchange to name a few. Writing and testing the HLD's and LLD's, test and implementation plans. Top head took us reckon 9 months give or take and we joined mid-programme. Wonder how long this one will take to unravel?

[JWLong]

Microsoft never..............

...........misses an op·por·tu·ni·ty to shit in it's own kitchen.

[Excused Boots]

Almost as if MS really, really don’t want anyone using anything on-prem rather than in (their) cloud.

Odd that.....

[jvf]

AI at its best

What a hoot. "modernizing productivity experiences", “secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences "offers modern meeting experiences."” Looks like CoPilot found the bullshit generator webpage while preparing this announcement.

[ecofeco]

WHOCOULDAKNOWED?

Some of us have been warning this is M$'s long term plan. Complete SaaS.

Now here's another warning: You M$ fanbois are going to love seeing many support roles go away and the rest of you taking on those duties. I.E. Level 1,2 and 3 desktop support will disappear and system admins will now take on those roles, via remote and phone menu. Which you will also have maintain.

I'm already seeing this happen. Personally, at a very large org I was working for. A lot, but not all, but a lot of server admins will now be cloud go-betweens. You will still, sort of, be managing servers, but on M$'s cloud and god help you when that cloud shits the bed. You will get all the blame and no help from M$.

And if you think M$ updates are ambushes waiting to happen to now, oh boy are you going love not having ANY control in the future.

But you fanbois keep being suckers. I will take great delight in continuing to ask every month, "So, how's that cloud thing working for you?"

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Libre Office works for me. I do a lot of complex engineering and heat loss stuff on top of my normal work and it has never failed. I have to send a lot of reports to clients in a stupid format that MS Office recognises so I save them as docx etc files. Absolutely no reason for me to give these fuckers (Microsoft) any money for any version of their office, hell if they offered to pay me to use it I would tell them to piss off.

I expect the usual horde of ''power users'' to tell me how stupid I am as they could not possibly live without some excel function or whatever.

[rmullen0]

Microsoft wants mass exodus off Office the same as Windows

It is obvious that if one wants to have any autonomy whatsoever in what they do on their own computer that they must abandon Windows for Linux. And Microsoft is doing the same thing to Office as they did to Windows. They want to control everything and spy on everything you do. They will not be content until they have created a total surveillance state. Glad I'm on on Debian now. Along with Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice. They do the same thing, work fine, are free, and most importantly let YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITHOUT CONSTANTLY BEING TRACKED AND SURVEILLED. The billionaire class are losing their minds, because they know there is going to be an uprising.