For most businesses, the cost and difficulty of shifting away from Microsoft outweigh the benefits
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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.
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.
Still seems like, for most businesses, the biggest hurdle is how deeply Microsoft’s services are embedded rather than politics
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.
The first paragraph links to an article about how the International Criminal Court ’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email.
This has caused some governments to worry. What if MS was ordered to block access to their software because the US wanted to apply pressure?
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