The amount spent on licensing is just goofy
Posted by Ragepower529@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 311 comments
So me and my boss were talking, and I was just mentioning the amount of money that’s being spent on just licensing me to keep me employed is goofy.
Between my 2 Js I have 2x E5s and I also have an F3 and E5 security and mobility. So that’s almost $125 a month to Microsoft. Not counting Co pilot, teams premium and teams calling
Then I have IT Glue, Connect wise, rmm and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t even begin to remember. So over and all. Just doing basic work I would be surprised if my companies are spending over $500 a month just licensing me. I don’t even provide any real. Revenue for the company. ( provide revenue for one of my companies.)
Just still no wonder why everything so expensive between spam filters licenses EDR vms, Easily spending a couple hundred per month for just software to employ people.
And that’s before p1, p2. Sbarepoint storage ect…
Granted it’s because I’m dealing with dod contracts ect… security’s more important but still.
OldMENSAGuy@reddit
All to cloud is working out well for Microsoft, Adobe, et al.
StarSlayerX@reddit
SaaS and Cloud Licensing has been increasing year over year and our 3 year enterprise licensing agreement is up for renewal. All AI features is now a "new" license that is outside of standard offering. Examples: MS Copilot, Teams Premium, Power Platform Premium.
My company had started restructuring licenses because the cost is out of control to stay competitive in the business space. This means eliminating and consolidating SaaS products, Third party integrations, Etc...
lightningthunderohmy@reddit
That's how they get you. I saw that coming. Cheap at the beginning, then move your infrastructure over and slowly increase the prices. When you completely are at their mercy because nothing is on-prem.. checkmate.
gundealsmademebuyit@reddit
On prem checking in.
Nothing has changed, still works great, still not beholden to YOY rate changes.
BortLReynolds@reddit
You're not on VMWare?
gundealsmademebuyit@reddit
Nope
fatbergsghost@reddit
What are you doing instead?
gundealsmademebuyit@reddit
We’re running hyper V for about 180 VM’s
Honestly, I don’t know why more people don’t just run hyper v. It makes perfect sense considering you are locked in at a price point of whatever the cost of the physical hardware is plus data center (or standard if you have a smaller remote location)
You’re not beholden to Microsoft charging you yearly and the ROI pay for itself if you keep the hardware more than 3 years.
I couldn’t imagine paying yearly just for the privilege of running my vm’s
Ludwig234@reddit
Lucky you...
sauced@reddit
That's just not really true, last year I had to convert Veeam to subscription, next year or two my remote support tool is going subscription only.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Too be fair... I've literally had this conversation with my newer boss and he still claims "Cloud is going to be be cheaper."
Uh... buddy I've used MS own calculator... And I know i'm missing things in that calc. It's going to be at least 250k to run on prem in Azure per year...
Storage and licensing on prem is 500K for 3 years... Running now.
So cheaper how? Cheaper where?
The real meat an potatoes of it is... He probably just means elimination of US jobs and then hire it out to an MSP or guys in some other part of the world.
Good Luck with that.
fatbergsghost@reddit
One of my bosses basically uses "It'll be better on the Cloud" whenever things don't work very well.
gpzj94@reddit
Cheaper, maybe, if you redesign your apps to run in native cloud offerings and currently had data centers around the globe to maintain.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Bingo.
But he didn't know that. He figured it just happened in the cloud... Because like magic.
gpzj94@reddit
How I envision that convo with your boss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecZL4Q2EVuY
QuantumRiff@reddit
Are you including power, AC, power protection (generators, UPS’s) and service plans and preventative maintenance on each? What about the cost of your DR site, backup circuits, DR hardware, etc? How often do you test your DR plan, etc? What about extra capacity for peak load times?
For us, cloud has been cheaper.
MBILC@reddit
Which with any cloud provider, you have to pay extra for DR and backups and all of that as well. Testing DR plan also has to be done with Cloud services and backup restores.
Yes, less worry about physical infra and redundant power and ISP circuits, but unless you are paying for rack level redundancy options..most basic offerings from cloud providers do not provide that for you. You hear about people who's XYZ system rebooted on its own or went down, because the rack or U their VM happened to be on crashed and burned.
37Signals moved out the cloud entirely, literally saving millions in cloud costs in the first year alone:
https://world.hey.com/dhh/our-cloud-exit-savings-will-now-top-ten-million-over-five-years-c7d9b5bd
When you break down the 3-5 year costs and if you have the in-house knowledge to managed the physical infra, you can get a fully redundant config in separate data centres with some pretty beefy back haul's these days for fractions of the cost of a cloud solution. Not to mention the amount of hardware you could buy, 1 year for you $1.2 million... a year...for that you could likely buy all the hardware you need with tons of overhead, redundant DC's with min 10Gb back hauls and have full regional failover and not have to spend another penny for 3-5 years.
DaemosDaen@reddit
The power used by most business Datacenters is not as much as Cloud companies would lead you to believe, nowhere near. You are not gonna double the costs just off the electric/security/DR plan or any of that other stuff you mentioned. If you actually DO pay that much for electricity, you need renegotiate your power bill or turn off some lights. Did you know office lighting costs more than most datacenters. Neither did our maintenance department till we did the study.
storage alone would cost me more than double our Data center TCO including stuff we can't get rid of like networking and Internet access.
malikto44@reddit
Those are often sunk costs. I have seen many places move workloads to the cloud, but realize that they still have the data center that they still need to pay for, since decommissioning it can be expensive (like having generators, PDUs, UPSes, HVAC systems removed as per EPA guidelines.) One place I worked at did a cloud push, realized they were saving absolutely nothing because they still were paying for all the data center stuff, since they still had specialty stuff that couldn't be sent offsite. So, they wound up buying new servers, and even after a new set of servers, a new SAN, a backup NAS, and two tape silos, they were saving a ton of money after moving out of the cloud and back on-prem.
There is a place for cloud computing, but it always will be more expensive than hosting servers yourself. You are going to pay for that server, regardless if it is on-prem or over at Amazon.
Own_Back_2038@reddit
It is definitely not always more expensive, a huge selling point of the cloud is lower TCO via reduced operational costs. An EC2 instance will be more expensive than an on prem server though, because those two things are radically different
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Those have already been paid for long time ago... We don't run our own DCs instead colo so that's included in the rent already. DR site was already factored in what I mentioned... and No I didn't run the numbers for that IN AZURE. (So i means azure is still coming in hotter.)
Colo and circuits to ISPs already don't care about that... If we need to burst a line we can burst a line, but given that's now how our business is run... Meh never going to be an issue.
People attempting to run their own DC on their own is probably not a bright idea these days unless they're massive. Shrinking everything down into 1-2 racks at most in colo for 5k a month, with smart hands help included.
I doubt cloud is beating that unless someone is running something much much simpler in complexity and need.
thortgot@reddit
Power, AC etc. are all part of TCO whether it's been capex'd or not.
Cloud infrastructure can indeed be quite a bit cheaper, but a lift and shift will never be but you've got to look at the total cost and compare it against a like for like equivalent.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Oh I don't actually mean cloud can never be cheaper or a better option...
But it's not always.
Right tool for right job and sometimes cloud isn't that.
trueppp@reddit
Are you pricing just a lift and shift or actually building for the cloud?
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Just the operational cost.
a60v@reddit
Yes, the drug dealer approach. "The first one is free."
thecravenone@reddit
Yo where can I find these free drugs?
ConsoleDev@reddit
I know a guy that can get you $200 in azure credits in 10 minutes, no questions asked
chubz736@reddit
Wish someone can find a loophole by creating multiple alias and stack azure credits
thecravenone@reddit
okay but I'd really like some cocaine
coingun@reddit
Yes you use Amazon credits to mine crypto and sell for cocaine. Ez.
notHooptieJ@reddit
they rely on peer groups for that.
sauced@reddit
Ain't no drug dealer giving away free drugs. I know, I checked.
TheBros35@reddit
On prem has nothing to do with licensing costs. We are still super on prem for stuff and all of those vendors have been jacking up licenses like crazy - they’ve basically all moved over to a per user per annum fee like cloud providers have. Don’t pay the bill? Device / service just quits working.
svideo@reddit
Right, they've also been pulling perpetual licenses and converting everything to yearly periods. Billionaires won't stop squeezing because they cannot ever have enough money.
trueppp@reddit
Some of it is understandable...my 4 socket Veeam perpetual licence is not worth the same thing today as it was 6 years ago...I can run 20x more VMs on my new servers than the 2 they replaced...
svideo@reddit
Implicit in this statement is that your software vendors should be pricing based on expected value to the end user. How much value I get out of the thing has absolutely no bearing on their cost basis. It's purely a play to squeeze every last nickel out of every customer and we all understand it in that context.
The older I get, the more I realize that Stallman was right.
trueppp@reddit
Just about everything is priced according to value to the end user.
What would the lrice of Windows Server be if you could just buy 1 licence no matter the size of your company? Huge companies would them pay way less and SME's would have to pay way more...
nefarious_bumpps@reddit
In the enterprise space, even on-prem requires an annual subscription.
scootscoot@reddit
I kept bringing this up at a previous employer that was going "all in on the cloud". Nobody cared as all the managers planned on taking their bonus and going to the next company.
aes_gcm@reddit
After that, they can make the product worse and you can't change. This is enshittification.
TaliesinWI@reddit
In our case, we went SaaS for one of our LoB apps because the on-prem support cost was almost as high as the SaaS costs, and the security model for the on-prem was a bit... outdated. We realized Swiss cheese has fewer holes and were happy to get it out of our network. Now it can be our vendor's ass in a sling if they get hacked.
notHooptieJ@reddit
this is the other way they're gettin ya.
they just let the on prem product slowly enshittify till it doesnt matter how much more the cloud costs, its still more secure and usually works!
tankerkiller125real@reddit
We've been a ZenDesk customer for a literal decade at this point for our frontline customer facing support agents. They're about to lose a customer over pricing, no other issues, no other reason, literally just pricing. For the amount we're paying ZenDesk we could add double the agents with the software we're migrating too, and we're actually getting more features!
The "Standard" SaaS vendors are out of fucking control.
RequirementMammoth21@reddit
Same. We booted ZenDesk after they hiked the price again. Did a price comparison with multiple competitors and found they were BY FAR the most expensive AND many of the alternatives were significantly easier to use and customize.
We asked our sales rep to knock down the price and we'd stay, figuring that losing a customer was worse than getting less. The rep thought he was calling our bluff basically saying, "nah, you'll pay what we said and you're not moving because it'll be a pain and major disruption".
We moved. It was, but now we're paying about 45% less on a tool that is significantly easier to customize, so we've gotten some actual value out of that too.
Mysterious-Safety-65@reddit
Have you checked out FreshDesk?
tankerkiller125real@reddit
It's the software we're moving too
GoferOars@reddit
These days there are B2B companies out there that specifically manage and negotiate on your behalf as well. Shows how bad it is!
moldyjellybean@reddit
You used to able to buy a 1 license for VMware, backup solution etc. Then it went to sockets, cores, etc. Soon you’re going to have pay every cpu % use even if it’s on prem.
I don’t even know why people are using shit like ServiceNow etc So overpriced for what it is.
CleverMonkeyKnowHow@reddit
> Microsoft License Certified
The fact you can even get "certified" in licensing says everything you need to know about how out of control this shit has become.
littlespoon1@reddit
Add to the fact that no matter what you learn about licensing now, Microsoft will change their whole paradigm next year for no reason.
_TR-8R@reddit
My boss asked me for a month to month breakdown of how licenses had changed in cost for the year, I said "sure" like an idiot because I figured that should be relatively straightforward to figure out.
Holy fuck was I wrong, I ended up crawling back with my tail between my legs and saying there would be a delay because I needed to find someone to help me figure it out.
Opening_Career_9869@reddit
don't forget outsourcing internal IT staff... the best savings happen that way.
StarSlayerX@reddit
As an IT manager, I absolutely hate outsourcing staff to third party out of country contractors. You save 50% in wages to get 20% productivity.
Opening_Career_9869@reddit
then don't do it, I fight it tooth and nail and will 'till I die, the companies look to us to make recommendation, sure you can't win it all but the mess this industry is in is BECAUSE of people in this thread that welcomed the cloud like the savior it was never going to be. It's all fun and games until "you" are unemployed and replaced by a datacenter in india.
tango_one_six@reddit
The ability for your company to restructure is the real reason why services are moving off-prem into the cloud. CFO likes the flexibility vs a CAPEX - they'd rather play this game vs having to pay costs upfront.
malikto44@reddit
Overall, I see this one of the main reasons people went to the cloud. Even though OpEx was 10x as much, it looked better to investors than CapEx, because it can be pitched as "being lean and not attached to material servers".
Problem is that those days are gone. CapEx and OpEx come from the same pocket now, so overall savings is more important.
What people forget is that every refresh, the same amount of servers can handle more workloads, so even though it isn't as "magic" as just having a cloud UI, it gets the job done, and for a lot of tasks (especially storage), is a lot more cost efficient.
project2501c@reddit
That was the plan all along: make you captive
whatsforsupa@reddit
Microsoft is bad, but atleast you get value...
Adobe Illustrator - personal use - $23/mo
Adobe Illustrator - for teams - $38/mo
It's like $15 more a month to manage everything centrally for the exact same product.
mvbighead@reddit
To the MS point, definitely agree. We needed E5 for various reasons, and some of the extras that came with it were worth real evaluation to pivot from other products. Once you start taking advantage of the extras and dropping other products, you can find value in an otherwise pricey license. In addition, you can have a plethora of product behind a single pane of glass (or a series of interconnected glasses in MS case). But all in all, if you can trim away other products, you can really find value in some of the licenses.
peldor@reddit
I'm not really sure "value" is way to describe Microsoft's cloud offerings.
Brufar_308@reddit
I called Adobe to drop soMe cc teams licenses because we were down several users and I saw no point in paying for stuff we weren’t using at the moment. They required me a lower price for all our licenses so that keeping all the licenses ended up costing less than paying for 3 fewer licenses at our current price. I kept the licenses and took the overall lower cost.
Just goes to show their subscription pricing is a flexible imaginary number.
Don’t get me wrong, I still hate them. If they can provide the service at that lower price, why wasn’t I already paying that lower amount, and don’t get me started on their tech support.
DreadPirateLink@reddit
This is what we do. Unfortunately it's a recurring conversation every year and is usually a couple weeks of back and forth getting Quotes then approval. They are obnoxious, but at least there's a(n extremely stupid) system in place to get that discount
chuckaholic@reddit
I like how buying additional licenses from Adobe does not include agreeing to a price. You just add the license to the account and you get an invoice later. Is that even legally binding? Like, I never agreed to a price... They just magically come up with a billable total out of thin air. I could only imagine getting our clients to agree to terms of service without giving them a total first.
iamLisppy@reddit
I second this: fuck Adobe.
SquizzOC@reddit
I have to sell Adobe and I agree, fuck Adobe.
SixtyTwoNorth@reddit
Sadly, I only have one upvote to give for this!
Fallingdamage@reddit
After 20 years with photoshop, I finally flipped Adobe the bird and spent $35 (one time purchase) for affinity photo and have actually been very happy with it.
whatsforsupa@reddit
I really like affinity, I pitched their suite to my boss - it would be a massive cost saver after about a year.
Unfortunately, we have specific tools built by our devs to interface with Illustrator, and our devs determined they couldn't get them to work the same way with Affinity :(
afarbetterplace@reddit
I just had this conversation with our board - $8k for annual subscriptions this year, when we used to drive to Sam's and buy perpetual licenses and their whole software suite for $20 apiece.
Breezel123@reddit
I swear to god, those grifters are the worst. We are using individual accounts too and at the end of each subscription period I cancel them and get an offer to stay for a better price. This just proves that they could still make enough profit even with a lower overall rate. They're just hoping that people are too distracted to notice that their subscription is about to end.
Creepy-Editor-3573@reddit
You just go in the future returns, and current discounts bucket. Are they making money on you, yes, just not the markup they make on others. Every business in America could charge less and remove more profit from the equation.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
We have Adobe Pro on a central licensing thing, and the Media tools individual (for the marketing department that "needs" it)... Every fucking month without fail, some Adobe "Rep" tries to reach out about the individually licensed users and claims that we can save money. The only way we would "save money" is if we had 200+ licenses and we got some sort of bulk discount. It's complete BS. So yes, fuck adobe.
swamper777@reddit
Much of the offset for licensing expenses exists in the form of contracts which couldn't be had without the appropriate credentials.
identicalBadger@reddit
At what point are all these cloud and SaaS fees going to be so high that companies are like “forget it we’re bringing services back on prem?”
Limp-Beach-394@reddit
I think there are few points to consider here -
identicalBadger@reddit
I'd assume most enterprise environments are like mine, lead by people who are older and wiser, who have cut their teeth on AD and maybe even Netware, and then shifted their knowledge to include cloud. They're the same folks that could lead companies back if needed. Younger employees will pick up whatever skills their roles require, I have faith in them.
No where did I say the solutions have to be open source (although certainly preferred). It could be vendors who break from the crowd and offer two solutions - aka "Cloud" that they manage and on-prem that we manage. Kind of like AD vs Entra. I imagine (hope) some companies will step into the voids that keep opening up when many companies are all being forced to bounce between vendors every few years due to price hikes at the original vendor.
Wishful thinking, will never happen. But one can still daydream about it! :)
Limp-Beach-394@reddit
About the older and younger folks argument, in past 10 years I've seen plenty of both, what I'm starting to notice is that the older folks tends to be either burned out or simply not caring as much about keeping up (they did that a lot, it's time to live) - while the technology keeps changing at a rapid pace, and sure some of that can be offloaded on experience (concepts often remain the same) but then often they will be too scared to even touch the new stuff. Whereas plenty of younger folks did not yet develop the experience thus they cannot offload some of the hours in order to grind the necessary skills, and oftentimes (given the scale things have gotten to) they will simply get overwhelmed by the scope, and as result not give a damn. AI surerly does not help this trend, seeing it everyday where people seemingly replaced their brain with a chatbot.
Having said that, it's not all THAT bad naturally, there are still some folks that are young, not burned out yet and passionate enough to keep grinding (on and off the clock) in order to keep up/make name for themselves. But it's a minority.
About the wishful thinking part, I can imagine something like that happening - and while initially maybe driven by folks of your mindset (please do not take this negatively) when the business grow the business people will come and turn it all around. Or worse yet, the initial implementation will offer both on-prem and cloud to distinguish itself, with the endgoal of luring in the customer base and then dropping the less lucrative offering.
MBILC@reddit
Many already are, example
https://world.hey.com/dhh/our-cloud-exit-savings-will-now-top-ten-million-over-five-years-c7d9b5bd
LForbesIam@reddit
We are public government hospitals and have zero income. Previously we could buy one time server licenses and cal licenses, the Windows OS would come with the hardware as a one time purchase.
For Office we bought Office 2003 one time license and used it for 10 YEARS. Then we bought Office 2010 and used it for 13 YEARS. Exchange was a one time license and SCCM as well and we had Cals. However we used the KMS system so if one computer was replaced by a new computer the cal licenses would just move.
If divided over the 10 year life cycle we paid about $800,000 per year for an infrastructure of 100,000 people. Computers were shared at a 2 to 1 ratio over all so it was not individual user licensing.
Now the costs with Azure have gone up to $25 MILLION a year for PUBLIC Government and that isn’t even counting the servers or anything else except the bare minimum. They are not even E5.
Also Microsoft has successfully driven out all the On Prem options.
Group Policy Advanced Management is a Ferrari as far as features. Entra Config policies are a bicycle with 2 flat tires. The comparison isn’t even close. We cannot even migrate 10% what we do in policy for security and lockdown in Entra.
Not to mention hospitals are 24-7 uptime or patients die. Right now we can run the entire network without internet access or even power because the servers are on-prem and we have generators for power on critical servers, switches and workstations.
If our internet service provider has a bad day (very common) then cloud is inaccessible.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
I don't know what policies you have and what not, but I found that between the GPO Analyzer, and the ability to now upload ADMX templates to Intune and use them I can cover about 99% of all the policies I could possibly need to use where I work. With that said, I don't work in government or hospital systems, so my policy needs are somewhat minimal (although we are currently going through FedRamp Medium with no issues).
LForbesIam@reddit
In our organization privacy and security is paramount because it is healthcare data that has to be protected under privacy laws. Policy is how we restrict computers to only the functionality that is required. We don’t give out local admin to everyone like is required for Entra.
I can see Azure Entra being ok for small businesses with 100 workers but when you get into the hundreds of thousands of computers and 6000 custom pieces of software the environment is way too complex.
thortgot@reddit
....What?
Local admin is absolutely not required for Entra. That would be insane.
How are you deploying that software today? SCCM? Congrats, you can do it in comanaged mode with next to 0 additional effort.
Autopilot is extremely slick for straight forward office devices but can be too much work for complex cases.
LForbesIam@reddit
So you cannot remote desktop nor remote assist with UAC. Quick assist cannot do what Remote Assistance does and the advanced version is super expensive and still doesn’t do what RA does with the logging.
Entra is using public IPs for domain resources which opens it up to Microsoft foreign workers having access to privacy data from the internet rather than having a VPN with advanced physical layers of firewalls to protect data from foreign access.
Entra has zero ability for logon scripts, start up scripts, registry preferences, targeted preferences, applocker, gpo services etc.
Users really need local admin if they want to do any configuration beyond the basics because of UAC. Support can use Teams to remote help but not with UAC.
SCCM deployment can be done to hybrid on-prem but for Entra from what I have played with their “per user” deployment is awful.
Plus for me the privacy is the biggest challenge.
I mean would you take all your expensive and private physical belongings and put them in another persons house where they have custody and control and where the contents control are also given to foreigners who don’t have to follow your countries laws?
People now have some fantasy that their data is private in the cloud when that isn’t the case. How do you think AI has scraped the internet already?
thortgot@reddit
You can do remote desktop on Entra if you want.
Logon scripts can be done (though they aren't recommended), start up scripts haven't been best practice for 20 years, applocker is fully supported.
Entra =! The internet. The fact that you equate these is shocking as an IT person.
the fact that you aren't aware it's multi regional (you control residency of your data) shows you aren't equipped to make decisions about this kind of thing.
BYOK Entra is the defacto standard for secure enterprise.
LForbesIam@reddit
Remote Desktop doesn’t work with security on. Also you cannot see the groups or users names in the Local Admins group or Remote Desktop Group because it is just a mess of GUIDs.
The functionality of login scripts and start scripts is that they are enforced to run on every login or startup cycle PRIOR to the user logging in. That means they take precedence over everything. Yes there are run once scripting but that is useless if the settings need to be enforced or are changed anytime in the future.
The difference between the “Internet” and an Internal network is the Internet is accessible from anywhere by anyone and has a PUBLIC IP. You can access a US or a Canadian Tenant from India or Russia or China. There are no restrictions. You don’t need a personal computer certificate assigned to your computer Only from the companies secure certificate service.
Microsoft Entra has foreign countries attacking it constantly and most of their staff are foreign agents.
An Internal network is IPs that are ONLY accessible after getting through multiple locked firewalls. It requires a personal certificate assigned only to that user and computer to even get through the first firewall. Then the data is protected using private IPs that don’t cross into the public range.
Yes there are “limited regions” but the data is still copies to the US which is run by a convicted felon right now who has immunity to do whatever he wants within US borders. Use wireshark and Procmon on any Entra computer and examine the traffic and then do IP lookups for the servers that the traffic is contacting. It isn’t hard to prove that their “regions” are really just a smokescreen.
thortgot@reddit
You absolutely can use RDP on Entra. Yes there is a bit of a trick to it.https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/client-tools/connect-to-remote-aadj-pc
Start scripts are bad practice but if you wanted to implement them you could.
Entra is not the internet and pretending it is, is ridiculous.
It puts you in control of your access. You want CA policy to restrict it more heavily than certs? Up to you. You can easily restrict access in the same vein as a hybrid domain.
Where do you get the idea the data is copied to the US? You realize that dozens of governments audit Azure right?
LForbesIam@reddit
Microsoft has a clear definition of INTRANET vs INTERNET since Windows NT 4. Entra is in the INTERNET classification.
It is public facing from anywhere in the world and does not require firewalls to be configured to access it and it uses public IPs. There certainly is no geo requirements either.
RDP requires security to be disabled on the workstation or it did a few months ago when I tried it. I will check again.
So you can guarantee that absolutely no one outside of your country from Microsoft has any access to your data? The data is stored on US data servers regardless of region. As I said do network tracing when you upload files or login to the portal.
In a cloud service data residency is not even as important as residency access. A person outside your country has no legal requirement to follow your countries laws at all regardless of what company they work for. The NDA and Privacy agreements are not worth the paper they are written on because they hold no ability for court enforcement.
As a sysadmin for 35 years people don’t get that their data is accessible by thousands and thousands of users.
Also OneDrive doesn’t even encrypt the local cache so anyone with local admin access has full access to whatever is cached locally.
thortgot@reddit
Entra is available over the internet, that doesn't make data within it visible from all geolocations.
If you are looking for a mechanism that prevents anyone at Microsoft from accessing your data, you're looking for BYOK or Customer Key. This is 2 part encryption where the company side key is required for decryption.
Overview of Customer Key - Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Learn
If you want secure data, you encrypt it. Purview is the appropriate tool for securing your data from DLP.
Could they theoretically modify the system to provide themselves access? Yes but it would be tamper evident as it would require
Just for fun, I actually did a PCAP of OneDrive data being synchronized, emails being sent and credentialing. I'm Canadian and have data residency set there for all services.
I imagine you think because the DNS says "authentication.microsoft.com" and a reverse lookup resolves a US address that's where the traffic goes? That's quite simply not the case.
LForbesIam@reddit
Microsoft has a Group Policy that encrypts the local Outlook cached folder. It also encrypts the Offline Files folder by default.
Allowing computer local admins access to OneDrive files for all users on the machine and not having a GPO to encrypt it like the users Outlook folder is a huge security hole they left open.
With servers home drives, access is restricted entirely to the server admins. That means the data is secure and accessible by less than 10 people in the entire world who are named and living in the country following the countries laws.
With Microsoft they won’t even disclose the names of the administrators who have access to the tenant data. As they don’t have support staff in Canada you can guarantee that the Canadian tenant data is accessible by foreign employees.
Also Microsoft can remove your access to your data at anytime they want. My family had a Microsoft account and accessed it from a vacation and they locked his account automatically due to “security” and he cannot get it unlocked. All his data and his tenant is inaccessible and trying to get a hold of support is taking months.
thortgot@reddit
EFS is vastly less secure than Purview from both a technical standpoint.
Your on prem environment has trivial security compared to a proper datacenter.
They do have support staff in Canada. They have offices in both Vancouver and Toronto. I've been to both amd talk with both account managers and technical folks at both.
If your concern is tenant data being accessed, with BYOK and customer lockbox you control when and how they can decrypt data.
Is it accessible to foreign folks if you allow the customer lockbox access? Yes.
Microsoft locks down tenants that have been compromised, that's true. If they'd followed standard practice with an emergency admin with a physical FIDO2 key they wouldn't be locked out.
plump-lamp@reddit
Yeah bro... You're lost.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
WTF are you on about giving everyone local admin for Entra? Literally no one is a local admin where I work.l, and we are full Entra.
Frothyleet@reddit
Yeah, but... this wasn't like a feature thing, this was your team making very poor choices in software lifecycle management and running unsupported software in a sensitive environment for years.
LForbesIam@reddit
Office 2010 was fully patched as long as it was enterprise licensed and then we upgraded to 2016. The functionality of Office 2010 was more than Office 365. They actually remove gui functionality with newer versions. Windows 11 has so much functionality removed from even 7. Windows 2000 actually had so much gui functionality.
I have a spreadsheet with hundreds and hundreds of ways that Entra is defective compared to AGPM
Top ways 1) Entra Config policies DELETE themselves as they have no check out or check in so if one admin has the policy open and another admin deploys a change the deployed settings are DELETED the second the other policy is closed. Also with no notice or logging. The settings are just erased.
2) Entra policies DELETE settings if the ADMX is updated. So if Microsoft changes the Edge ADMX all the existing entra settings are just deleted without warning like they never existed.
3) Entra Config policies don’t support logon scripts, start up scripts, registry preferences, creating shortcuts, targeted preferences, Citrix ADMX, file copy, file delete, GPO enforcement every 90 minutes, service permissions, service enforcement, setting rights and security policy, auditing, Group Management, Applocker etc (there are like 500+ things in the comparison list Entra is missing)
4) Custom ADMX. We have about 300 ADMX in sysvol. Entra allows 10 for the ENTIRE tenant. Entra doesn’t support the Citrix ADMX.
5) NO BACKUP. AGPM can backup and restore the last 1000 changes to each single policy so I can rollback policies in 10 seconds to a previous version going back 13 years.
6) No “differences” AGPM has an ability to compare two policies and show the differences so before deploy you compare the prod policy to the pending new version and validate the differences are only what is in the RFC. Also you can pick and choose any two policies to “compare”
7) History commenting and logging. AGPM has history comments on each policy and who deployed the policies so you can go back in history for 10+ years and find the RFC numbers and the name of the person doing the deploy. This is really important if something isn’t working and has to be reversed.
And the list goes on.
LitzLizzieee@reddit
With 1, why the fuck do you have admins editing any Entra config without a proper CAB approved RFC?
LForbesIam@reddit
Again you didn’t read what I wrote. Someone opening the policy without deploying changes doesn’t require an RFC. It also doesn’t log someone has it open either so you have no idea.
In a tiny environment when you only have 1-2 people doing the work it is fine but in any environment bigger we can have hundreds of RFCs from multiple teams doing changes in multiple time zones.
The point is that this is inept by Microsoft to have a system where a deployed change is just “deleted”.
We are paying hundreds of millions of dollars over a 10 year period to have 10% of the functionality we have with AGPM for a CAL license.
chicaneuk@reddit
Microsoft is increasing it's profit year on year by 17% and in the last financial year earned $171 billion profit in the year up to April 2024. And it's thanks, in no small part, to idiotic leadership who just blindly switch over to platforms like Azure under the belief it's somehow better value. Microsoft are absolutely taking us all to the cleaners. Honestly it makes me sick.
what-the-hack@reddit
>We delivered over $245 billion in annual revenue, up 16 percent year-over-year, and over $109 billion in operating income, up 24 percent.
They actually make and support software... that runs the world...
>The Cigna Group’s 2023 revenue grew to $195.3 billion, up 8% compared with 2022’s revenue of $180.6 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Cigna’s revenue was up 12%, which company officials said in an earnings call reflects strong growth at both Evernorth Health Services and Cigna Healthcare.
What exactly are ya'll angry about?
chicaneuk@reddit
I think all of those profits are grotesque. I am specifically angry that Microsoft have basically leveraged their position to now force people down a certain path (i.e. Azure) if they want to use any of Microsofts services and once they're onboarded trying to decouple yourself from it is nearly impossible.. and they're free to charge whatever they want. As, apparently, they are due to the sheer amount of money they make.
The Governmental competition and market authority people are so afraid to touch them as I'd imagine tech is one sector which is helping to prop up peoples pensions due to how pensions are invested, thus reducing the burden on governments..
what-the-hack@reddit
You can run most businesses with just an m365 E5 license across the fleet. And nothing else, literally. It covers nearly everything.
Rewind 10 years ago. You got exchange server, windows servers, a pair of DCs, a file server, VMware 3 host cluster, an HP DAS or SAN. Some bs AV vendor, remote access? Pick your poison because god forbid you serve owa externally you need to buy an MFA provider.
I used to build this crap all day for years for companies, and more just so people can work.
All of that is in the $65/mo. sku and more. No one wanted to solve this, no one wanted to even try to tackle this, look at xen server, look at VMware, look at Citrix, where are they?
What exactly is so terrible about today’s landscape? It’s cheaper, much much easier to manage, more secure, more feature rich. You want to go back to running Skype servers and Iron ports be my guest.
thortgot@reddit
Group policy and Entra Config are nearly entirely overlapping for modern controls. What are you implementing that you can't do 90% of it in Intune?
dingerz@reddit
https://oxide.computer/
bimbar@reddit
That just seems to be a virtualization platform. Which microsoft has not killed btw, and that's also not what this was about. MS has killed off the on prem software that used to run on top of those virtualization platforms, and a prebuilt one from oxide won't help you there.
dingerz@reddit
I don't work for Oxide, but elastic infrastructure is costing over $25 million/yr to your org right now.
NetworkCompany@reddit
I bet your organization is better with the DOD CMMC policies. We have to know, exactly what users do, what they run, what they click on and when. Nothing else does what P2 does really. It's quite amazing.
Ohmec@reddit
Why would you need anything on top of an E5? TBH all you really need is business premium with one person in the tenant having an F3 with a F5 Security & Compliance add-on license. Gives you features all throughout your tenant. If you've got 2 E5s, then nothing is being added with the F3+F5 addon.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
F3 and e5 add on is separate for just an admin account.
So 3 accounts total
Ohmec@reddit
But what features are you getting out of it on a tenant level that aren't already provided by the E5 licenses?
planedrop@reddit
Recurring payments for things always go this way, they'll just continue to rise forever.
Doesn't mean the services aren't worth it, but yeah, there's a lot of SaaS now.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
It's not like running on prem is free.
I'm not suggesting that cloud is cheaper, but "cloud licenses" are covering more than just raw software costs.
There are other bills if you run your equipment in a colo, and even if you run your software in your own corporate building, you're not running it "for free."
A. Licensing is not limited to SaaS/Cloud software
B. Power and cooling are not cheap, and are still paid by your company, even if it's not in the same part of the budget as the software and hardware
MBILC@reddit
https://world.hey.com/dhh/our-cloud-exit-savings-will-now-top-ten-million-over-five-years-c7d9b5bd
BrainWaveCC@reddit
A. I'm not trying to argue that cloud costs aren't a thing. I'm merely pointing out that there are also costs on-prem
B. That's one person's overview after one full year. Let's see how it goes by year 3 to see if those projections remain on track.
C. One of the reasons on-prem costs can be less obviously expensive is that management rarely even keeps up with a proper maintenance and upgrade cycle when they don't have to. Not that I think that every upgrade is a useful or worthy upgrade, but I also know that being 3 versions behind on major and critical software brings its own troubles and costs that are not as easy to track on the balance sheet.
D. Just wait until all those orgs that reduced their staffing levels in conjunction with cloud adoption, realize that there's a lot that doesn't get automatically managed when things are back on-prem, and they will need to right size their staffing levels again. That's also not free.
E. Regulatory compliance is more costly and complex in a fully-on-prem environment, because the scope of responsibility is broader, and there's no shared accountability of the infrastructure.
F. Think security is easier on-prem vs cloud? Possibly, if you're not going to allow any remote access to the on-prem infrastructure for customers or users or admins...
We'll see.
If the infrastructure doesn't change significantly over the next 3-5 years, then their projections are likely going to be accurate. But if they have to deploy any new/large system -- oh, they will feel the difference, and the savings in "licensing" might not be fully worth it.
MBILC@reddit
I am with you, all valid points.
The cloud hype had too many companies move to cloud that did not do a proper review of their needs and their environment, the companies that did full 1:1 migrations of on-prem and then complained about the costs, thinking their Dev environment VMs that had 100 vCPU's 10TB of ram and a billion TB of disk space would cost the same as they had on-prem right..
I am very much an advocate for hybrid. There are many things SaaS and IaaS can do well for companies, alleviating a lot of that overhead you mention (which is often an after thought or not even considered until it is too late and they committed) But there are also many workloads that are going to bankrupt a company if put into a cloud platform, or that workload not adjusted to newer technologies or options.
All about finding the right tool for the job.
I was a one man IT Admin for many years and was always "on-prem rules" but when you really dig into it with an unbias view, you can see the pro's and con's of both.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
I'm not sure if it is simply cloud hype or leaders/owners not wanting to actually analyze and assess anything any more. It's just easier to go with what everyone else is doing, and if there is pain, there will be shared pain.
This goes for a ton of things that have been embraced indiscriminately in the past 2 or so decades, if not longer -- the latest being AI.
I can fondly remember the days which it was the actual technology professionals that were being blamed (sometimes, rightfully so) for embracing technology for technology's sake. Yet, here we are... 🤣🤣
MBILC@reddit
Blind faith..
"Well the sales reps i met with over a round of golf and a bottle of whiskey said it can do everything and we can cut out staff levels by half, so I signed the deal, we are moving"
"Joe CEO over at ABC123 who I know well moved to the cloud and said it went great, so we are too, start tomorrow and be done by next week"
Ya, plenty of those stores...
GeneMoody-Action1@reddit
That is why brass typically sees IT as a drain on the bottom line in most cases, like we choose to spend all that... At my last job, I was routinely making %.5M budgets where 98% of it was not even things our department used. The rest was just what the company needed as a whole, and we had over site over licencing and support.
When you add up an employees TCP + cost to employ from this angle, *that* is what gets weighed against *we need more help* not literally *we need more help* and why IT departments are almost always under staffed, stretching to do more with less.
I always tell people when you see an employee or department as a drain, think to your self what happens when drains get clogged?
pinkycatcher@reddit
70% of my "budget" is software that other departments use
25% of my budget is my salary
5% of my budget is stuff I have a choice in
yay for small business.
GeneMoody-Action1@reddit
Just combine the last two to round your salary to 30% and say you have a choice in that, if accounting does not catch it, it must be approved, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
pinkycatcher@reddit
Ha I wish, I actually presented the first IT budget in company history Jan of this year (with annoyingly no help from my Finance Exec boss at the time), and all I got back was two months later "We're on a spending freeze." With zero comments or thoughts or anything at all in regards to the budget itself.
MBILC@reddit
If only more companies allowed inter-company billing of IT resources per department, then they would see the true cost centre of the company is not IT, and now IT becomes a profit centre.
Still baffles me to this day how companies see IT as not required or a cost centre, when they literally run the company from behind the scenes, no IT or IT services, you literally have no company..
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Marketing intern with a 5k mac that got approved to make a shitty tik tok
ExoticAsparagus333@reddit
I work at a place that every two years everyone gets the new top of the line macbook pros. Its an investment to get the most productivity out of people. Investing in your employees is good, it makes them more efficient and happier and better. Stop being penny wise and pound foolish.
MBILC@reddit
Sure, if they require it, but how many other jobs do not require the latest top of the line system when improvements on performance are minimal for what most employee's do.
For hardcore users, absolutely, those seconds shaved off or even minutes doing a task add up quick, and us power users hate waiting on our hardware.
But for so many companies you see replacing perfectly good hardware that is still performing fine, is a total waste of money, not to mention the e-waste that comes out of it.
ExoticAsparagus333@reddit
I would bet most users see benefits. How many companies are run on bloated excel spreadsheets? An m4 would probably help them. Sure most places have windows and then lock them down so hard the most powerful machines are garbage. But you shouldnt neglect that a second is huge. A second increases latency in big tech is considered unacceptable and a loss of possibly tens of millions or more.
MBILC@reddit
Locking down a machine does not always make it garbage, if done right. But yes, I know what you mean. I have worked at clients who provide machines that have so many security tools over lapping on it, everything takes forever while booting up takes 10 mins while every tool kicks in to scan something, so annoying!
Speaking to excel, even on the most beastly machines I have built, specifically for accounts, Excel still remains to be a steaming pile of crap for multi-hreaded usage...like come on MS.. get with the times. (But at that point that data should likely be in a proper database and even use Excel as a front end...but those finance people! love Excel for everything)
Keep things lean and mean right, as you said, those seconds add up, and when you factor in the hourly wage of an employee or contractors, suddenly you are wasting hundreds of dollars a week or even day, all because a company does not want to spend $2-3k every couple years....
rotoddlescorr@reddit
That's why you need to hire a professional to make a good tik tok.
Old-Rip2907@reddit
Every dept is like this. Sorry but we aren't running a company without Accounting either.
Okay maybe we can get rid of HR.
pinkycatcher@reddit
The only thing worse than an HR department is not having an HR department.
My current company doesn't under the CEO's misguided idea you can outsource it all to ADP. I'm surprised he hasn't figured out why he's replaced 4/5 of his executive team in 2 years and nobody knows what to do because there are no policies, training, on or offboarding.
MBILC@reddit
lol,
Certainly, but most other departments do not get the flack that IT seems to get, other departments have been around since companies started and so they are accepted as a requirement for any business.
Why so many companies push to cloud, with the promises of lowering their in house IT needs and costs, cause now someone else will run it all for you (Of course failing to mention they now need a cloud specialist instead). But now the wake up call is happening..
GeneMoody-Action1@reddit
"Marriage is grand, divorce is 100 grand." - The Cloud
IMHO, the cloud saves when decentralization is the value add, or the product itself is a cloud offering and the product function is the value add.
If the value add is perceived to be "this runs itself and needs less people or less skilled people", that is almost always a bad plan.
caa_admin@reddit
Relevant. https://sso.tax/
Lukage@reddit
Fuck Adobe
caa_admin@reddit
I work in K12. They play the least nice, by far. I can't automate squat with their stuff or their methodologies.
VexingRaven@reddit
I'm curious what it is you find you can't automate. We've synced Azure AD to Adobe for automatic provisioning for years with basically no issues.
caa_admin@reddit
Apple ecosystem.
I can add the CC installer to my MDM. I cannot config my MDM to install whatever the user requires(via auth of email) once they launch the installer.
VexingRaven@reddit
Is this a mac issue? We've been using a pre-packaged creative cloud install for years on Windows without any issues.
To be clear, I'm no fan of Adobe and their constant tweaks to the sign-in workflow have screwed me over many times, just trying to see what I'm missing that other people are doing.
caa_admin@reddit
Bingo.
wivaca@reddit
How much time would it take you to work without those tools?
If you could do everything you do as fast without all of these, it makes sense to cut back. If you would be spending $500 more in your time to do the same as you do now, then it's break-even. You should take your pay * 1.25 to include benefits.
I'm a dept head, and the IT staff's worst habit wherever I go is to look at costs in a vaccuum rather than how they relate to productivity and ability to get the job done with less people, or faster so they can do other things. Often less tedious things.
asedlfkh20h38fhl2k3f@reddit
Here's to the bring-your-own-everything future we are inevitably headed towards. This will trend in smaller companies long before it trends in larger ones, but eventually everyone will make the switch, and everyone including IT will be better off for it.
MBILC@reddit
Just wait until Azure / AWS or GCP have a major breach that does result in more leaking of company data that was supposed to be protected based on the shared model they all tout... watch how fast companies come back on prem then.
We know Azure has already have several very close calls, but also major ones that allowed leaking of data...
ExoticAsparagus333@reddit
You can always self host and build with open source software. Its possible if you put the work in.
MBILC@reddit
Yes, but for some things you are just shifting costs to now require in house specialists for said platforms and open source tools, which can get very expensive, and unless said open source tool has some level of support, most businesses wont touch it.
WhatElseCanIPut@reddit
Microsoft and the like have clear target customers. You need either self host solutions or smaller software companies solution
intense_username@reddit
You may not be generating revenue for the company, but you work in IT. You're a force multiplier for those who do generate revenue for the company.
KupoMcMog@reddit
in both ways too, Good IT can help, but bad IT (not just performance wise, but funded, supported, etc...) can hinder just as much.
MBILC@reddit
IT that thinks they are decision makers = bad. IT is there to enable the company to work and function, while using our expertise to recommend solutions, and hope they take our advice.
I feel many people in IT have control issues and thus they want to try and control everything everyone does because "We know best", when no, we often do not.
TotallyNotIT@reddit
That would be a force divider then.
intense_username@reddit
You ain’t wrong there. Gotta maintain those highways for a smooth ride.
ResponsibleBus4@reddit
This one of my biggest struggles about justifying going to cloud, if we keep everything on prem and stick to perpetual licenses we can almost afford a second person to cover the extra work of managing our own solutions. It feels like a trap to extract maximum value out of businesses.
MBILC@reddit
Tell them to read over:
https://world.hey.com/dhh/our-cloud-exit-savings-will-now-top-ten-million-over-five-years-c7d9b5bd
CleverMonkeyKnowHow@reddit
It's a ploy alright, but it's to placate idiots who kowtow to Wall Street.
It's better to spend $100,000 a quarter on predictable expenses, insofar as morons on Wall Street and a company's CFO are concerned, than it is to spend $2,500,000 one time for hardware that'll be used the next five years, plus can have depreciation claimed on it.
The latter option is more financially "sound", but the former option is more financially "viable" in regards to stock price and a company's ability to "budget". Plus some smaller firms would have to take out a loan to float the capex to purchase what needs to be purchased at one time.
Lucky_Engineer929@reddit
This is one of many reasons companies are moving to Linux.
syrupmania5@reddit
That and container support, making it an actual modern server.
realmaier@reddit
Ask a mechanic what they spend on tools, maybe this gives you another perspective. The software that enables you to do your job doesn't just spawn into existence through willpower. I understand your intial reaction, but on second thought, I don't really agree with most of what you wrote.
rdldr1@reddit
The cost of doing business.
telestoat2@reddit
In theory, license costs go towards development and support for fancier optional features. Fancy stuff costs money after all. There's always some chance they're just charging as much as they can get away with too, though.
SystEng@reddit
The typical software vendor devotes 5-15% of revenue to development. Often software vendors put more money in salesperson expense accounts than in development. Then there are companies that specialize in buying popular products then cutting all development costs and just rake in pure license profits until customers stop buying it.
LWBoogie@reddit
IT by design is a cost center, not a revenue generator/accelerator.
denverpilot@reddit
That sounds like UN-designed IT.
I’ve been at multiple places where the so-called “IT” was required to generate ANY revenue whatsoever.
That said, DESKTOP IT done wrong can be a significant waste of resources for sure. Not everyone needs every tool. But many places bleed money to “simplify” licensing — for no particular business reason.
The time spent messing with it can be quantified as can the license cost losses, to get a comparison. Not that difficult. That’s “I can do it in my head” math for most decent tech managers and senior sysadmins.
Tech of any sort in business is simply a simple cost-benefit analysis. Can one clerk with a PC do more than the ten people we used to employ to maintain a room full of filing cabinets long ago? Sure with the correct business procedures, training, and correct tech tools.
That business procedures and training thing is fairly lacking in most modern businesses. They think humans are born understanding the tech their company chose willingly to deploy. Kinda funny to watch, really.
“Here’s your new bicycle kid. Didn’t even buy ya a helmet. Have fun!”
rotoddlescorr@reddit
Revenue is made as a team. If you didn't do your work, could the company even make money?
BadSausageFactory@reddit
our facilities guy complains about ordering creamers for the coffee and I try to explain to him that for what it cost us to put an ass in a chair in front of a monitor, 13 cents for a coffee creamer seems like a deal if it keeps them from leaving the building to go to Starbucks
Lylieth@reddit
Where I work they force us to use one specific company for coffee. And it's just coffee-tea...
NO one likes it. Everyone leaves to get actual coffee. Our director tried to show them this, how if they just spent more on what coffee we had, fewer people would leave the office and potentially productivity would increase. I mean, getting a good cup of caffeine can take up to an hour depending. That's an hour not in the office working!
Naznarreb@reddit
OR you start punishing people who leave the office for coffee. You get the extra productivity without having to spend money on beverages.
/s
BlueHatBrit@reddit
Give this man a title bump and a raise, he must have an MBA!
PersonBehindAScreen@reddit
And you know… the easy easy EASY fix here is to listen to what people tell you… it astounds me how leadership folks are sometimes.
It’s obvious to everyone that the one simple fix is coffee that people actually like
tfsprad@reddit
Management is such a difficult job.
cluberti@reddit
Our campus puts out mailers a few times a year with "we're re-doing the drinks and snacks, here's what we're doing now and we're looking for suggestions for changes if anyone has any" and they actually listen, within reason. Getting people back since COVID WFH has been pretty difficult, but stuff like that helps for people who still choose to or have to go back in.
BadSausageFactory@reddit
green boxes, amirite? I have the IT card and I order some extras now and then, in fact I think it's a good day to order some vanilla coffee syrup for the onsite staff
Lylieth@reddit
No.. its far far worse! I'd take Green Mountain coffee over this swill ANY day of the week.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Yeah I sure love the free snacks and drinks when going into the office
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
This is exactly why place like Google had a free cafeteria in their building and fed their employees; they still work while there. If you think about how much time is actually wasted on just lunch time alone; it is far greater than an hour. You get people starting to get ready to leave at least 30 minutes before and then it takes a good hour after to get back to being fully productive. Keep them in the building for that entire time and you just scored a bunch of free time.
cluberti@reddit
My company built whole campuses decades ago to keep people at their desks and working. Entertainment, food, exercise/showers, etc. - all to make sure salaried people spent more time at the office. And it worked.
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
I was explaining this to a CEO I was stuck with at some event, he thought it was dumb they do this and what a waste of money it was for them. Then I asked him what happens around 11am every day? people start slowing down on their productivity and start talking about what they are doing for lunch and then they leave for an hour only to come back to take a couple of more hours to get back into being productive again. By the time they are back up to speed, it is also ready 3pm and people start shutting down again an hour later. He realized what a genius it was to basically trap their employees at the office all day instead of having them leave.
midorikuma42@reddit
How out-of-touch does a CEO need to be to not know this, without having it explained to him like a grade-school kid by one of his underlings? How do these idiots even get into these positions if they can't figure basic stuff like this out by themselves?
David511us@reddit
I worked for a company many years ago (kinda a pseudo-dot com) and the owner hated coffee...he was a tea drinker. So there were no coffee machines in the office. We had one floor of an office building (fairly high up). So employees would just take the elevator down to the lobby, and then cross the street to the coffee shop. Was at least 20-40 minutes every time...a bunch of us managers kept trying to get him to see how much not having coffee was costing.
Finally he relented, but he bought stainless steel coffee mugs with lids for the whole office and mandated that coffee could only be drunk in those. Apparently his stereotype of a coffee drinker was a slob who would spill coffee, and his hope was the mugs would prevent that. (Spoiler: they didn't).
Acrobatic_Guitar_466@reddit
Yeah, they always show the "nap rooms" and free food and gym like it's a perk....
It's because they'd prefer you live at the office...
In the grand scheme of things, it's cheaper and better for morale, until you get a cheap, short-sighted, stupid manager to ruin it, by acting like they can take it away as a punishment.
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
Though really, if I was a single dude in my early to mid-20s, I’d basically live at the office and would have been pretty nice at the time. It really is designed as a trap instead of a benefit and you end up working double the hours because it’s convenient.
BadSausageFactory@reddit
free pizza, foosball machine, beer tap gets unlocked after five. like a goddam cult if you try to leave early too
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
Not to mention propping up your CEO like a prophet…
Spritzertog@reddit
Exactly. When an engineer stays on premise, rather than going out to lunch - they are away from their desk for far less time, plus they are very often talking with their colleagues about work. Or - sometimes they just take the food back to their desk. Add in the extra morale, and this is a big win for the company. In the end, it probably costs the company $20-30 for lunch, and a decently paid engineer is probably in the $150/hr+ range, not counting all the extra costs.
say592@reddit
I was in SF for work, so went over to Google HQ to meet a friend for dinner. We agreed on 6pm, so she would just stick around and work a little extra. I was running a little late, so that turned into more like 7pm, no problem, she was working. We ate, chatted, and I left around 930pm. I asked if she wanted a ride back to her place so her boyfriend wouldnt have to come pick her up and she said "Nah, I have a couple more things to finish up here." She stayed another hour.
Also while we were eating there were whole families there. Like people's partners would bring their kids, they would all have dinner, then they would go back to work. It was wild.
Great food though.
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
This is also why some of them provided childcare as well, kept everyone in the same building and parents could be notified of something without too much disruption in their day. When my dad worked for a military base, it was really nice having a doctor, a cheap cafeteria, and some other amenities close by that he could use while at work. He could go to the doctor for a quick checkup over a lunch break or something quick if he needed to. I worked at a place that would bring in dentist to do checkup on your family for free and then schedule anything major; along with being able to vaccinations. It was awesome!
Spritzertog@reddit
My company gets it. They actually spend a fair amount of money on snacks, beverages, coffee, creamers, free lunch, free dinner, etc. Engineers are expensive, and that's just salary. When you count things like software licenses .. especially the big ones like EDA tools ... keeping people on prem (and happy) is important.
FullPoet@reddit
I hear you can get a subscription for that these days...
BadSausageFactory@reddit
incompetence as a service, if the acronym wasn't already used
topazsparrow@reddit
What really gets me is that you often cannot buy licensing directly from the vendor, you have to go through a reseller for many things.
That reseller marks things up 5 to 15% and takes their cut - but they functionally didn't really do any work - not tens of thousands of dollars worth of work for certain.
retiredaccount@reddit
A 5-15% VAR/broker fee is insurance against license predation and the separation is well worth it to both sides when the finger pointing begins due to an audit or compliance finding. Seller and buyer get to blame the broker, who promises to “do better” so that everyone remains friends…and out of court.
topazsparrow@reddit
that's a very foreign concept to me, can you provide an explain a scenario where that would be useful?
retiredaccount@reddit
Let it remain so, cause if you haven’t experienced it, it’s best you never do.
topazsparrow@reddit
sure... but I still don't understand. What's the scenario here?
retiredaccount@reddit
Useful? Never claimed that. It’s a good thing that litigious business practices remain foreign concepts. In fact, sign me up!
topazsparrow@reddit
bro, can you just answer the question?
retiredaccount@reddit
It’s been my experience when someone claims they “don’t understand” and want more and more “context,” they aren’t serious. No amount of explanation will ever be enough. This conversation proved that again.
topazsparrow@reddit
you're attacking me after asking you to clarify what you meant, because I didn't understand the value of why it works that way... all that after berating my intelligence...
You've got middle management written all over you, jfc... this was painful.. even for reddit.
Good day.
retiredaccount@reddit
I rest my case.
JoeyBE98@reddit
It would also blow your mind how many users may not even utilize their licenses in any capacity if you're at a large org. We have 30k+ users and I pulled together a really in depth licensing and usage report for Microsoft user licenses. So far I have saved the organization $58,000/yr in additional licenses they were going to purchase
cjcox4@reddit
Welcome to the cloud. Where you pay a stranger so they (and you) can see your data on their servers and hope that other strangers can't see the same (but you'll never know).
I question your use of the word "security".
Dabnician@reddit
And?
That's why we have contracts, standards and policies that require audits for compliance.
That is literally how the world is built, that is literally how all of our companies work with client data, We are those strangers to the data of our customers.
cjcox4@reddit
You have the ability the deep inspect "the lock box"? I don't think so.
thortgot@reddit
SOC auditors have done a review. Multiple governments around the world have done a review and chosen it as the platform of choice.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you store your money in a bank. You haven't been given the opportunity to review the bank controls, systems or software but you still have confidence that money is accessible to you right?
Any time you use a closed source software/firmware (Motherboards UEFI, Network card, ISP modem etc.) you are inherently trusting the developers and auditors of those systems.
Heck if you have a keyboard you connect and you didn't disassemble it, you are trusting the fact that there isn't a cellular modem attached to it broadcasting your keystrokes and allowing for remote access.
cjcox4@reddit
Banks are actually the worst. Having worked with banks.
Just because "everyone is doing it" doesn't mean "you get an automatic pass". And it's a slippery slope once you go down that path.
thortgot@reddit
Banks, while not always great, are significantly better than "the worst" (ex. the majority of SMBs)
Many of their tech stacks are quite bad but they are heavily scrutinized from a code perspective. From a US perspective there are several acts and regulatory agencies they have to comply with. Information Technology (IT) and Cybersecurity | FDIC
My core argument is you are putting an arbitrary line in the sand regarding cloud computing. You are already trusting at least a few dozen entities (like many hundreds) with potential access to your information, money and data.
cjcox4@reddit
I understand your "core argument" ... that is "everyone's doing it"... so it's "ok". I'm just saying, maybe it's not ok.
thortgot@reddit
So you have some theoretical method that would allow for zero trust to occur in all scenarios?
Some mechanism that allows you to be confident that on prem is more secure than cloud?
cjcox4@reddit
I can always be assured that on prem is more secure than cloud. Always. Why? Because one can be known and the other is unknown.
Though some might say you can't compare known with unknown. Or, if you're like me, only one can be defined, so it wins.
thortgot@reddit
Even if you ran an entirely OSS stack (impractical but doable) you are trusting the people that reviewed that code were both acting in good faith and knew what they were doing.
Why do you assume that cloud auditors are inherently any different?
Unless your hypothetical opponent is the US government, a cloud implemented correctly is significantly safer than even high security on prem environments.
If your hypothetical opponent is the US government, you're going to lose anyway.
cjcox4@reddit
Why are you adamant that you can implicitly trust something you have zero visibility into, or can verify for trust for that matter?
I view my security infinitely higher than yours, or even the US government. I think that's the right way to look at things. I recommend that everyone takes that stance.
thortgot@reddit
It's nonviable to have visibility into everything you trust. The world is simply too big and too complex.
Do you trust Linux? Why? Even something as small and relatively passable as SE-Linux is too large for a single person to truly parse.
cjcox4@reddit
I have more trust in something that I can see into than something that is completely hidden. I get that you have to "be right" on this. I'm just saying from a security perspective, you're absolutely wrong.
Why is security a problem today? See your arguments.
thortgot@reddit
So you do trust Linux?
cjcox4@reddit
Something I can vet that I'm running on prem? More so than the "things" being discussed. Absolutely. Who would disagree with that? How could you disagree with that? With that said, a closed cloud service based on Linux, presents the exact same opaque "just trust it because we said so" problem.
thortgot@reddit
You personally compile your Linux distro? You certainly aren't reviewing all the code that runs on your machine.
You are already trusting code because "We said so". That's my point.
cjcox4@reddit
At this point, "your point" is apparently a hatred for things that "can be known". Ignorance is bliss.
Limetkaqt@reddit
Agree, the amount of SMBs without a MFA is too damn high.
kozak_@reddit
Who the heck cares. Your data has been leaked out there already
cjcox4@reddit
:-)
I care.
flimspringfield@reddit
Yes but regardless of what you think the company makes more than $500 off of you per month.
When I became an IT Manager many years ago (no longer work there) but we would get like a $70k bill per year from Microsoft.
When you break it down per user it came out to like $40 a month which is way more than what that individual user was making for the company.
Opening_Career_9869@reddit
it's ok, soon they'll replace you with the cloud altogether, problem solved. I will never understand why you all go along with this..
patjuh112@reddit
Just curious why you have multiple E5's? Mean i'm a CSP tenant invited to a zillion subscriptions but at the end of the day I only consume a E5 license and that's about it. They all have their own security aligning to whoever invites me as a tenant.. Just wondering why you would need more the one.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Both companies want me doing work with only there accounts for like docs ect…
patjuh112@reddit
I'm still not getting it (not understanding it, not saying you have no valid reason to do this), I have those things going based on a single E5 account though I guess from security principal it can be demanded to be a complete separate entity... It does put value to your post, if i have to split my account up to license per CSP it would blow up far in excess of that 500$.. shit's crazy
zedfox@reddit
Having a single E5 license 'unlocks' all of the E5 functionality across the estate, but your're still supposed to buy licenses for 'every user that benefits from it' - if that's a security feature, you're talking about everyone.
LitzLizzieee@reddit
This. to meet Microsoft's licensing requirements, I actually have 3 E5 accounts. My personal corporate one, my test corporate one (a mirror of a standard user config) and a cloud administrator account.
I also have another on prem administrator account and 3 laptops. (Main, Testing/Staging, Dev)
For me, and my company, the cost of all this is a drop in the bucket for the value I provide.
xb4r7x@reddit
Crazy licensing is what keeps us all well paid - don't hate on it. ;)
Daphoid@reddit
A former Director (I didn't report to him, we joked around a lot) would pass me in the hall and say "Sup Cost Center?"
Amusing, and true at the same time :).
If you spin it though, you're revenue enablement. Without you they can't make money as easily :). Downside is you don't get a direct share of the commission and they out class you in pay by 1.25 to 500x, but hey.
CelticDubstep@reddit
We're a small company of around 30-35 employees and we spend close to $200,000 a year on software licenses alone, if not more. Over $100,000 of that is Autodesk Software alone, $15,000 of that is specialized PDF software, etc. We keep everything on-prem, so only use Microsoft Business Standard, no E seats.
MrJacks0n@reddit
Autodesk pricing has gotten out of hand.
engageant@reddit
All this licensing cost, yet not one iota of spelling or grammar check functionality included.
DayFinancial8206@reddit
Well you see, it all started with this company called Adobe
malikto44@reddit
I know I'm going to go out on a limb here, but with licensing costs going so high that it even makes big companies take notice, I'm surprised that businesses don't:
Create in-house departments to build apps that have parity with the vendor (cr)apps. I actually did this, where a vendor appliance was so wretchedly bad that I wound up doing the same thing using basic C/C++, Bash scripts, and F/OSS tools... and my solution worked better, although it didn't have a pretty web UI.
Collaborate with other businesses to make software. This way, both businesses have at least a starting point. I've been a PM in this scenario where two businesses wanted to write something from scratch to get rid of a vendor whose commercial offering was expensive, faulty, and support-free.
Just do F/OSS. This is the best of all options.
Paying license fees for something that some cash towards a development effort would greatly pay off, and even give them something to sell themselves just makes sense.
KoalaOfTheApocalypse@reddit
Would the cost of labor and reduced productivity for manually and individually managing everything less than the subscription costs?
Are the subscription costs less than the result of a potential security breach?
I'd look into ways to consolidate costs. For example, if you already have IT Glue, could a bundled package from Kaseya reduce your RMM and endpoint security costs? (most likely, yes) next, I'd look into anything I could ditch. Ultimately though, having to be in compliance with DoD is always going to be expensive.
Agency35Dingle@reddit
Exactly this. CW RMM is expensive. For the price of just that one tool you could get Kaseya 365 Endpoint and save a bunch of money. And DattoRMM is just better than CWRMM by a mile. Just over $2 a month gets you an RMM, EDR, AV, and endpoint backup.
sanbaba@reddit
It's basically zero compared to what they likely pay for your "seat" licenses. The amount it costs to keep you allowed to use software is... honestly, criminal.
progenyofeniac@reddit
I try to look at these things as, you have an employee who’s getting paid $100k/yr or more, clearly bringing more than that value to the company or they wouldn’t still work there. And the cost of their equipment, their licenses, etc is no different than the cost of the electricity, heating, furniture, etc that they already get.
Basically, at least some of those things are necessary for them to do their job securely, and it’s the cost of doing business.
frac6969@reddit
That’s what I think too. The license costs are all tools for our users. Plus the CEO makes more in a month than our IT budget for the entire year.
jake04-20@reddit
It's funny when you get push back from mgmt for a 6 fig infrastructure refresh spend that's slotted to last you 7 years in production. Like for sake of math lets just call it $140k infra spend, over 7 years that's $20k a year, if you factor 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, that's $9.60/hr for business hours. Much less when you consider the stuff runs 24/7/365, then it's less than $3/hr. You couldn't get slave labor cheaper than that.
progenyofeniac@reddit
While you’re not wrong, you have to realize that management sees these things come across their desks more than once every 7 years.
This spring it was $140k for new switches. This fall it’s a laptop refresh. Next summer it’s new storage. A year later it’s new VM hosts. And every month/year it’s M365, Adobe, ProofPoint, Citrix, AutoCAD, and the list goes on.
It’s never $140k and we’re done for 7 years. Not that all of that isn’t just part of running a modern business, but I can see why it gets frustrating for management.
jake04-20@reddit
I know what you mean, but client workstations and licensing are typically departmental spends in the eyes of my accounting department, and engineering never seems to get the push back IT does when it comes to infra spend that the entire company uses. But they don't bat an eye at similar spends when it comes to other departments. It's annoying.
KupoMcMog@reddit
"Hello, can I be a CEO? I am versed at sitting around in meetings all day and having people talk at me..."
coralgrymes@reddit
This kind of jazz makes me wonder if/ when businesses will just say no or if they even can say no and find alternative solutions. This licensing fees and subscriptions keep accelerating in cost year over year . At point will it will get to where it cuts too much into business profits?
binkbankb0nk@reddit
Please use spell-check. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “Between my 2 Js”.
Spell-check is probably included in one of your licenses.
MBILC@reddit
"my 2 juniors"
jfoust2@reddit
What, acronyms are down to one letter now?
MBILC@reddit
ya, funny this came up as I was just reading about how short-forms can actually be insulting. It shows that you do not value someone , and you are taking shortcuts to try and get your communication over with quick, so you can move on to other things, because communicating with said person is not important enough to actually use proper spelling.
whythehellnote@reddit
A > DA > TLA -> ETLA > VELTA
jake04-20@reddit
He says somewhere else he means two jobs, but I thought he meant two jump stations lol.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Still waiting for Apple intelligence
MaintenanceLimp6041@reddit
if you're waiting for any "intelligence" in LLMs you're going to be waiting a while.
JwCS8pjrh3QBWfL@reddit
Microsoft Editor is included in E5 😉
Revzerksies@reddit
I have over 225 users and my ERP charges me $50 per license per month. For what they call "mainteance" I do all the backups and configuration changes. And if i need to buy another license they charge me $2500. And the support that i get is Ass.
hihcadore@reddit
Is two Js two jobs?
Also, licensing is per user, why are you consuming two different e5 licenses plus an f3 plus an e5 sec and mobility.
One account should probably be your daily driver that needs access to email and whatever else you need to do day to day admin-less functions. And your all your admin accounts can go license-less.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Correct two jobs. Both I have an E5 at.
And the f3 + e5 security and mobility is for an admin account.
Basically I work full time at an msp. Which has out sourced me full time to a client. How ever if I do any other client work I can also get a portion of the billable rate.
So I get my base salary + what ever I bill for the week. Normally around $62-99.5 a hour depending on the type of work.
Then with out sourced client I have also agreed to support there new spin off company. ( how ever it’s just support only )
hihcadore@reddit
You guys might want to relook your licensing. You don’t need licensing for admin accounts assuming you have a regular daily driver with licensing attached.
Same for tenants you manage, you don’t need an account in each one as I understand it (this is just from memory, but I think you can have admin access from the partner portal for tenants you manage).
Mr_Oujamaflip@reddit
Yeah F licenses are for non-windows users. We use them for our mobile workforce who use android phones and tablets.
Few-Print8957@reddit
This is the right answer.
Outrageous_Cupcake97@reddit
Per user per month 😅
daven1985@reddit
Microsoft are bastards in this place. I remember when E5 came in and it was labelled 'Top license, all you need.' Then over the following few years a bunch of new stuff comes out that each takes an additional license.
CoPilot is an interesting one, I am using it and like it. Though I do wonder with thier recent decision to include it in Family and Personal licenses if they are going to do something similar for corporate.
PappaFrost@reddit
Please go to the closest mirror, look yourself directly in the eye, and say "YOU ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY...." LOL
Razorray21@reddit
Theres a reddit post somewhere a couple of years ago where someone did the math and it was more expensive to license a server that it was to shoot it into space.
The-IT_MD@reddit
We’re a Direct CSP in the UK offering below retail pricing on csp subs.
If we’re doing it others will be too.
Have a hunt around in your country, you’ll find a csp that can offer some great savings.
jake04-20@reddit
It's just the cost of doing business. Your employer pays more than that even, assuming you are getting 401k match and you get health insurance through your employer.
Fallingdamage@reddit
I try and look at what various products do and 'get gud' by figuring out how to do that myself instead of buying more click-ops products.
Lanky-Cheetah5400@reddit
I consider these costs part of each employees overhead - IT manages it, but if we have an employee we need these monthly costs for their software.
pancakeman2018@reddit
Not to mention, they probably spend $500 a month just to carry health insurance on you. I think the point you are missing is you have a job, and your company actually pays for shit you need to perform it efficiently, trust me, having worked on the other side of that for about 8 years really makes you appreciate the little things. How do you figure you don't provide any real revenue for the company? You seem new to the game and that's fine but you have to play your cards right. Should your company decide to outsource IT services, they would be paying around $150 per hour for MSP consulting. You have a skill that is necessary for operations. If you are having conversations with your boss about not bringing any value, you may have lit the unemployment fuse for yourself. Start looking for another position now.
Companies make a lot more money than you can imagine, like millions, if not billions, AFTER paying their employees and all their bills, so your $120 a month license fee is literally pennies in the grand scheme of things. After doing this for so long, you realize how little of the budget you consume.
On the flip side, you have companies that buy entire fleets of tractor trailers, like 20 new tractors at $200k a piece, but can't afford to upgrade 10 year old servers for a total cost of $60,000 but bitch because they are so slow.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I’m newer to the budget side of things, however,
The conversation with my boss was not about me, not bringing any value . Of just more how expensive the overhead for a general business is.
wyrdough@reddit
One of the two things cloud is good for is starting a business. It makes the first year or three a hell of a lot cheaper and your costs grow as revenue to cover those costs grows.
That part is still true today despite the increases in pricing, assuming you don't just buy everything you see just because it seems cool.
Where the value proposition is more questionable is when you actually have the capital to invest, a large enough head count that the licensing costs turn into large numbers, and enough stability that you can make reasonably accurate projections about the sizing of the locally hosted infrastructure and head count you'll need to run it over 3-5 years or more.
pinkycatcher@reddit
The cloud is amazing for any scaling. You simply can't beat it if you're scaling.
It's not good for consistent load.
Ideally a company would be able to cover all of their baseline computing in-house and anything above that would get handled by the cloud in some manner.
No company can simply scale up and down in minutes like a cloud can. But you also pay for that ability.
pancakeman2018@reddit
I gotcha. Overhead is always high.
Cloud never made sense for the businesses I worked for simply because there was typically no growth. But, insert a business where they start with one server and expand to 30 over one year, yeah, cloud does make sense. If the economy is bad or something, they could scale back some resources and computing power and save money. The ebb and flow type business model makes sense for cloud. It is very expensive, when I calculated it out, I figured out at the time we could literally buy one brand new server every year instead of going to cloud.
Frothyleet@reddit
Yeah, and I mean the CNC machinist downstairs demanded a $2m Haas machine to do his thing. Businesses have always had to pay for expensive tools to empower their employees to be productive, it's just more are made obvious in opex these days, versus capital investments.
And even with all this expensive licensing, they are coming out way ahead. American worker productivity has exploded over the last 20-30 years, advancing far more quickly than compensation packages.
Outrageous-Insect703@reddit
I agreee SaaS licensing has gotten out of hand, and I'd guess most companies are unaware of (1) the cost (2) terms and limitied ability to downsize until renewal time, as few are month to month and (3) dormante or un-used license count. While I try to stay up to speed on these 3, my company of about 180 users spend around $1.5 Million /annually. Now some of the SaaS is very expense such as Netsutite and Salesforce but still it's a huge number.
Leat29@reddit
Well when I became responsible of the infrastructure of the company I'm in... I removed : - vmware - oracle databases - most of the Microsoft servers licencing - lots of little software / tools
Replace most of them by some open source alternative, yeah it ask more maintenance / skilled worker but it's also way more interesting for the IT team to work on that.
50k euros a year of savings
chewy-chewbacca@reddit
Adobe has entered the chat
PersonBehindAScreen@reddit
And if you opt for the on prem product still they’re either:
outright deprecating it
jacking up the costs in some way to make it less attractive… such as making just support for on prem cost as much as the entire SaaS package
Or just put you on per user anyways on the on prem but now you don’t have the benefit in the shared responsibility model of the SaaS model
Tons of bugs and security vulnerabilities in on prem vs their SaaS
wwbubba0069@reddit
Autodesk killed perpetual licenses for subs, then last year people were still setting on perpetuals, so Autodesk turned off the activation servers. I have "perpetual" keys, but can't activate them anymore.
Dont_Hurt_Tomatoes@reddit
It’s getting to be insane. Most of my groups renewals are up 5 to 10 percent.
I’d love to switch to different vendors, but they know either they have a captive audience because it’s expensive to switch/retrain or they are the only vendor for that product.
It is not my money, but my company is looking to cut costs, and it’s frustrating having these over-inflation increases.
buecker02@reddit
Most likely you don't HAVE to have all those licenses to do your job. On the flip side, the CEO does not HAVE to play 18 holes of golf with a "business partner" every other day.
So even if the company cuts out some of those licenses that doesn't mean you get to see any of that cash saved.
SteveJEO@reddit
You should force her to then. At least after she'll understand why you complain about time wasted.
MashPotatoQuant@reddit
Hell yeah, gimme that E5 license over golf any day of the week
whythehellnote@reddit
$125 a month to avoid playing golf sounds a bargain
OtherMiniarts@reddit
Publicly traded companies need to prove to shareholders that they have consistent, predictable revenue. Subscriptions out the wazoo are easiest way to do this. It's just the unfortunate reality of modern business, and especially modern tech.
Also don't say you don't provide revenue for the company - sure you aren't making direct sales or whatever, but neither would the actual profit centers if we weren't there making sure their computers aren't on fire or email address is hacked.
Just think to yourself "how much revenue would we lose by doing everything on pen and paper?"
moofishies@reddit
Sorry I'm a bit confused. Are you talking about the money the government spends on you as a contractor, or the money your company spends on you?
If you are talking about the government, they don't generate revenue the same way as a private company so that's completely irrelevant.
If you are talking about your company, whatever contract you support provides revenue and your work is part of that revenue.
Just wanted to provide some context for whatever job you are doing, it sounds like you are thinking about it the wrong way from a business perspective.
Common_Dealer_7541@reddit
May I provide some insight as an IT admin for many years at a government contractor? There is a difference between a “direct bill” and support. I was not direct bill so the government paid nothing to license me. I was a cost center. Yes, the government paid admin costs on the contract, but my work, licenses, overtime, training, etc. were taken from the company’s bottom line.
$500/mo, or $6k/ year is actually not that expensive. In the days of perpetual licenses + support, we easily paid more than that for members of our team using similar (but older) tools for tickets, monitoring, management and the like.
Dabnician@reddit
You dont really see what that pays for and to be honest its worth it.
E5 gives you Risked based conditional access and that auto risk resetting when the user resets their password. Its also got the safe documents feature and that defender for office v2.
Like that shit alone is worth a lot because of users that are dumb as fuck.
You combine that with DLP and purview which replaces the need to have a email archiving solution.
Sure you could do it for cheaper but that just trades your companies money for your time.
RedShift9@reddit
Holding safety features hostage. "It would be unfortunate if some of your users got... Phished...". It's a protection racket.
zedfox@reddit
it's disgusting
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I know what it pays for and that’s why we need e5 or at least the e5 security and mobility. And it’s why the company needs to have it ( for compliance reason makes it easier )
It’s expensive, all I was complaining about and throughout the supply chain the cost is based down to the consumer.
RBeck@reddit
Don't give MSFT any ideas or they'll create a consultant BYO license where you can use it at any/every company, but it will cost us personally and it will be expected.
wideace99@reddit
Congratulation for the wise business decision to migrating from on-prem to cloud and the vendor lock-in road.... It's like hitting 2 birds with one stone.
Your employees/management who took such wise decisions clearly deserve a bonus :)
Lower_Fan@reddit
How much you make a month? And remember they add to your 401k and insurance and maybe stock
$500 of licenses doesn't seem that bad when they are spending $5k-$15k a month on you.
EViLTeW@reddit
If they're spending $5k/month (\~$42,000/year salary), then $500 is a 10% increase in spending on that person. That seems like a lot in general.
The real "problem" is that it sounds like he's working for an MSP or consulting firm that works for DOD contractors. So they really aren't spending $500 a month "on him". They're spending $(x/500)/month as part of contract A and $(x/500)/month as part of contract B.
We have a few service contracts where I work for a couple million per year. To fulfill those contacts we spend $100-200k/year on support and licensing for a few different applications and some analyzers that are used by like 5 people total. We aren't "spending $20-40k on" each user. We're paying $100-200k/year to support our contacts.
Angy_Fox13@reddit
5K a month is not 42K a year.
RCG73@reddit
They are talking about business costs not salary. There’s a whole lot of back end taxes ins etc that are line items per employee that aren’t salary.
pmormr@reddit
Anywhere from 1.5-3x the employee salary for overhead, depending on the industry, office space, benefits package, etc.
freon@reddit
It roughly is, depending on where you live and the quality of the benefits offered.
42k is the pre-deduction take home salary to the staff person, but there are payroll taxes/FICA/worker's comp/health insurance copays/retirement contribution matches/other benefits that have costs above and beyond when you see in your paycheck.
kozak_@reddit
$500????
Yeah. Not close for us
pmormr@reddit
Just wait until you realize how much companies spend on commercial real estate they don't technically need. lol.
thortgot@reddit
Back in the 90s I was paying over $80/month for documentation from IBM. No access, software licenses etc. Just the books. Licensing while simpler wasn't cheap either.
A few hundred a month in licensing in today's dollars for not only actual computing but magnitudes more complexity seems like a fair trade.
brokenmcnugget@reddit
especially when you are essentially paying for beta ware and the support sucks
high_throughput@reddit
I worked for a government office that hired an Oracle consultant.
That was a stroke of luck because it turned out what they needed was a license for every single Oracle product.
AaronDotCom@reddit
Microsoft pays out $24 billion dollars in dividends a year
where do you think the money's coming from?
SuperDuperAlvin@reddit
You should check out https://www.bsure.io They help companies get control of cloud lisensing.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Not a bad idea I’ll suggest at next budget meeting.
yankdevil@reddit
And this is one of many reasons companies are switching to Linux systems.
Fabl0s@reddit
Former Employer was Developing ECUs Software in Germany. Depending on Project and Customers we would need about 5-10k€ in Hardware with Software Licensing from 15k to 40k Just to Onboard someone. Some of the Coding PMs managed 2-3x that alone while the less technical ones were cheaper overall. Then comes Salary, Bonuses, Insurances, normal IT Cost per Head... Ain't cheap to afford high fluctuations there, which is a good thing in my book since it encourages to keep employees and be a better company than the others really. Hands down my best Employer so far by a long shot.
_BoNgRiPPeR_420@reddit
Cost of doing business, and drop in the bucket compared to what they spend on salaries. This is why the average cost of an employee is about 130% of their salary - licenses, benefits packages, group insurance, laptop, office space, etc.
AlCapone90@reddit
I dont get it. Why you need all that licences and multiple of it?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
2x accounts for 2 different companies and then an admin account.
lilhotdog@reddit
You're free to roll your own with opensource or otherwise free software. There's a reason most of us don't.
Shington501@reddit
Everything you mentioned helps the company generate revenue, it’s essential. But also F Microsoft
damnedbrit@reddit
Were you indirectly asking them to fire you to save money? You can be a goat farmer on your schedule, not theirs